Embroidered Collage

After flipping through the sashiko patterns I picked a few I enjoyed and decided to develop works around the names of the patterns along with the patterns themselves.  The one I showed last week is called segmented-tortoiseshell.  So I combined that idea with the swap materials that I had and came up with the idea of a line of movement referring to turtles in which I would echo the basic hexagon a number of times.

I used a portion of the redder fabric to cover five peltex hexagons, which will be embroidered further and eventually attached to the canvas, after the sashiko stitching is complete.  I'm not sure yet whether I'll keep them abstract or give them little heads and feet to be more representational.

This was the first time that I was trying to work on a background that started out only as one piece of fabric.  I figured I would glue it down with liquid medium to an ungessoed canvas, as there was no reason for that extra stiffness if I wasn't going to paint or collage on it.  Well, that didn't work as well as I'd hoped because it didn't adhere evenly.  I think the canvas soaked up some of the medium.  I was tempted to rip it off, iron it flat, and fuse it down, but I liked the waves and wrinkles and didn't want to lose them.  Instead I took three wavy lines of machine stitching across the piece, although you can't really see them at this point.

Next I applied watercolor crayons.  I'm still on my learning curve with those.  I achieved more control than some other times I had done this, but not as much as I'd hoped for.  I had been looking for the level I saw with the bubbles, but between the scribbling the color on and using a 1" brush to apply the liquid medium I didn't get there.  I do like the result.  The warmer spot in the upper right is positioned to be under one of the inner hexagons of the stitched pattern.

I'm not sure if I'm done with the background yet.  I'm contemplating collaging on a bit of paper and un-altered fabric.  I'll think on it a bit.