Embroidered Collage

I expanded on the pattern on the dress of this lady cut from the collage sheets that come with Somerset Studio to create this piece, another 8"x10" on watercolor paper.

I chose the yellow paper to blend into the background of the dress and moved those two pieces around until I was pleased with the placement.  I adhered them and used watercolor crayons to draw in the red and green triangles.  I wet my brush to turn the scribbles into paint, then started poking holes for adding stitching. 

I found out that the green blended in too much on top of the dress, which inspired the extra small red triangles, to make it obvious that the pattern overlapped the dress.  I also needed to add the stitching on the blank paper or the whole thing looked too abrupt.

This was where I intended to stop, but the big white space in the upper right was just too overwhelming, so I took a grey pen and did some scribbled storytelling there.  I like the look of the writing now that it's there.

Overall, though, I'm not thrilled with the piece.  It's too involved to be minimal and yet not layered enough for my taste.  It would look so much better on a complex cream background with different textures and colors peeping through.  On the other hand, I fulfilled my objective of developing a work by extending a pattern from a collage image, so it was a worthwhile exercise.