progress on all fronts

the more I do to this the more I like it!

at the current work rate this should be finished by the end of next week --- yippee!!

after a long hiatus, I finally got back to work on this piece

the top picture is where this was a couple of weeks ago, the bottom picture is where we are now

yesterday after I had done the stitching around the tall, golden looking grass, I decided that it needed some color (it originally was just stitching against the background)  my solution was to pull out my newly acquired (as a Christmas gift) Inktense pencils and color inside the stitching

WOW!  it really changed the look of that foliage, and it added exactly what I was looking for

now I need to figure out what gets done next

the stitching has begun on the horse shoe lock piece

unlike the first of these pieces which was against a very bland gray and white background, I've decided to do this piece against a much more intensely colored, wood grain patterned fabric

this may create challenges of it's own, but at least so far I like it

this is a sort of anatomy of the designing process

I started with little stick figure dancers, then went to some bigger dancers, but the idea lost it's charm as those figures got big enough to actually do the piece 

since it is a piece that would make it's debut in a fair grounds building with not such great lighting, it needs to be bit enough and bold enough to make a statement in those conditions that can be seen from 15 feet away  (ie:  it needs to have that "come hither" something that will draw folks across a crowded room)

during the morphing of this design, I've been reading about the father of abstract art (Kandinsky) and thinking about this design in a more abstract way

which brings me to that bottom square -- thinking about those dancers and their partners from the point of view of the pinata hung above their heads -- all circles of swirling skirts and sombreros

I'm pleased enough with this to think about color and the real size of those pieces -- we'll see how that goes