Wigwam Book

I am one of the many people who have been participating in Maggie Grey’s free online classes. You have to have her book Textile Translations in order to participate.

We have been experimenting in Mixed Media using a number of different things.

This is my work for the first lesson. The colors are fairly true in this photo.
















In these photos that follow the color is bluer than the piece really is.
























I didn’t have any hand made paper for the pages so I used some scrapbook papers I had and stamped images on the blank sides.

Sunset

Here are a few photos of the sun going down on the little bit of fall color still left around here.

Looking to the east.














These photos are looking more or less to the north.




















This one was taken last and already it was getting darker just within a few minutes time.














Tomorrow I’ll show what I’ve been doing this past week or so.

Moonflower

When I first started this I really didn’t have much of a plan. I knew I wanted a big flower and that was pretty much it. Well I also knew that this piece would either be hung in our bedroom or the hallway. Anyway, I just kind of played it by ear and this is what I ended with.




















I know it’s not the best photo (as usual) but it really looks better in person. The leaves seem to blend into the background too much when viewed from a distance but they really are quite different from it. I may work a little more on this to see if I can do something about that. Here’s a couple of close ups.

















Looking through some of my books and after a little bit of playing around on paper I finally came up with the leaf quilting design. It took me a little while longer to get my nerve up to start free-motion quilting the bottom.

Click on any of these for a larger view.



















If you look back in the previous post you can see here that I eliminated one of the halos around the moon. I’m not sure if that was a good thing to do or not. DH thought it looked too big, and after all, the flower is suppose to be the focal point.

Something I want to mention here is the size. It is 19 inches by 28 inches, which is a little off from the original plan. It was supposed to be 18 x 29 ¼, which seems like a weird size to me, but I was trying to use the Golden Mean Ratio with this particular wall hanging. The Golden Mean Ratio was used in ancient times by the Greeks in their architecture and is said to emphasize elegance and beauty of line. The ratio of the Golden Mean is approximately 8:13, meaning that if your piece is 8 inches wide it should measure 13 inches long. I’m not sure if the Golden Mean made my piece more elegant but it did keep it from ending up looking too short and fat.

I am open for all critiques and thoughts on this piece.