Sunday, January 21, 2007

Hand work

I've been spending a lot of time this past week doing handwork on my current piece. Which means I've been watching a bunch of movies and tv and listening to alot of books because I can't just sit without something occupying my brain. I just can't imagine doing handwork all the time; it certainly cuts down on the amount of creative time I can do on a piece. And I'm using thick thread and taking big stitches.


The stitching is holding down these two (and 3 others) rectangles of gossamer (a very thin interfacing type material) that I have painted. The rectangles are about 5" x 6" in size. Below is a little bit closer view and you can sort of see the big stitches. It seems to be shinier in the picture than in reality, although there is some metallic gold paint on here.


While I've been doing this hand stitching, I've also been making more backgrounds to continue this series. I now have 5: red, blue/purple; yellow; green; and brownish. The last two are done with fabrics that have stamping and screening in addition to the dyed color. They are going to be more difficult to work with, I think, but one never progresses without a challenge.

We have a winter storm warning in effect for tonight and tomorrow - an inch or two of snow along with icing conditions. This will be the first snow of the season and odds are everything will be closed tomorrow. Baltimore goes into panic mode at the mention of snow and it's fueled to an even higher pitch by the tv weatherman who can't wait to tell us about how awful it's going to be. I'll bet the grocery stores are getting their pre-snow run on milk, bread, and toilet paper. I can sort of understand milk and bread, but for heavens sake, don't most people have more than one spare roll of toilet paper in their closet?