Embroidered Collage

I received my initial critique from Casey Bradford for the "All that Glitters" challenge. She put some of the thoughts I had been having into words and made a point I had not consciously thought about.

She identified unity with variety as my main thrust, and approved. She described how she thought that the piece would look best with bits of metallic scattered throughout, in the background and in the squares, as well as in the focal points of the metal mesh. She suggested as a goal making it look like my design elements are growing from the background, as a number of contemporary embroidery artists do, including some of my favorites. Apparently, this is usually achieved by using low contrast, stitching from the back into the forward elements a bit, and using background colors in the front elements. My painted lace collages were identified as moving in this direction. These were some new words for some of the thoughts swirling in my head and it was helpful to have a defined version to look at.

The new thought that she presented was that I would need to consider whether the central metal would be prominent, or if there would be a progression in shape or color among them. I had just thought about making them essentially visually equal as a given and had not asked myself this question. I can’t answer it until I get started, but I’ll keep it in mind.

My next step is a visit to the fabric store, as I don’t seem to have what I’m looking for in my stash to cover either the squares or the background.