Playing with Gold

Since the gold on the inner band turned out so well I thought I would try a little something in the wings.  Getting it started is a little tricksy simply because  the thread is fairly stiff.  It has a springy sort of body rather than being silky and flexible like regular embroidery thread.  On the larger wind I started with pinning it using light weight quilting pins, but that just didn't hold it into the right shape.  For the smaller wing I tried a different approach.  I drew the spiral pattern with the Bohin white quilt marker.  then I started in the center and worked outward toward the outer arms.  It worked beautifully and the curves came out much more smoothly.  Yes, I'm very pleased. 

Having gotten the essence of the wing design sketched out, I think I'll start setting the mirrors for the tail today - or perhaps I'll outline the tail feathers and gt that area brought into the rhythm of the design as a whole. 

Thinking of Designs

Even as the smaller Peacock Roundel develops, the large Victorian mirror piece is playing around the edges of my mind.  After working up and discarding a few designs, its doing me a lot of good to be at a distance from it and working on something akin to it but not connected.  This is giving me some perspective and some space for my subconscious to fiddle with details.  I took the cardboard backing out of the frame to use as a template. There were a lot of directions I could go, but it wasn't until a friend commented on one of my Pinterest pins that I made a leap about what to do with that odd sort of squashy top arch.  It was then I made the connection between the late Victorian time period and Art Nouveau.  Suddenly the arch made sense.  Now I have gone haring off after Alfonse Mucha and Gisbert Combaz.  Most people know Mucha's graceful, sinuous women and flowers - very distinctive.  And there's that arch again.

And the clear simple composition and mass dynamics of Gisbert Combaz fit exactly with this technique and the visual impact I want it to have. 

Mix it up with a little of Bilibin's Firebird,

an Art Deco book cover 

and colors from Medieval Persian mosaics,

and perhaps a Palekh box or two

I think I have a plan in sight......

Piecing the Applique

Once I got the basics set on the piece, it is helping me keep my eye straight on the design.  It was now time to put the applique pieces on the peacock's body to give it the background color to stand out from the background and the frame.  I appliqued the colored areas using dupioni silk.  I love the idea of really rocking the colors, and that worked out so well on the Lotus Paisley Box Lid that its something I wanted to repeat.  I found a lot of inspiration for this in the Tenmakers of Cairo video where they demonstrate their technique for applique - brilliant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39zkCcQqWp0 .  I enjoy doing needle turn applique and those tiny pins make it so much easier than regular ones. 

Once the applique was in, I finished the border as far as I could and I could really see where it was going. 

A New Design

Things always seem to start simple, but, at least in my Universe, it doesn't take them long to become extravagant.  Phillip calls this sort of thing my "Cistine Chapels".  Okay, I admit it; he's right on the mark.  A friend gave me a broken Victorian mirror a couple of years ago.  When it hit the floor the thick bevelled glass mirror was hopelessly smashed and the joints in the frame had popped.  He's in the business of restoring furniture and got it with a whole truck load of rather nice things.  He said that fixing it wouldn't pay him for the time and energy involved to redo it.  So he gave it to me.  It is 52 in x 30 in and arched across the top.  The frame itself is 6 inches wide and 3 inches deep with a built in gilded inner frame - solid walnut.  Really beautiful fixed up.  and no, I don't want to go to the struggle of finding another piece of bevelled glass mirror that would cost a fortune.  So of course it has to have a suitable grandiose thing to go in it.  Its another one of those things with Great Potential.  So it has sat in the barn for the last couple of years waiting for it's Great Eureka moment.   

And then there was this tambour embroidery and the need to do something truly splendid with it.  That's when my gaze fell upon the poor abandoned broken frame and I began devising a Plan.  (And I'm using a lot of Capital Letters here because plans of this scope just can't be properly described in lower case. )  And, yes, I have a whole head full of really epic ideas that all include things I really don't know how to do or do well enough.  Then I began on the design. I am still in my Peacock Phase - all those sinuous curves and gorgeous colors.  At Gulf Wars, a friend  showed me a piece of gold couching work she'd done in a class she took.  It was really lovely and I thought to write down exactly the kind of thread she used - Kreinik #7 Japan Gold.  It was such a great addition to the rest of the idea.   It was as though I had too many ideas all wrangling with each other and each of them had something that was good.  It became a struggle, a hassle, a Problem to get this design put together.  And each one demanded to be finished before it would get out of my head and I could start on the next one.  I'm glad I have a big roll of butcher paper and a large design wall.  It was becoming a monster. That was last week.

Friday night I said to myself "Screw all that!".  Forget the Struggle; forget the Agenda.  Just do something that feels good.  I dug out a large-ish hoop (14").  Padded the inner ring with some heavy twill tape and just started sketching on the back of some of the rejected designs.  Doing something small and entertaining to practice those techniques I don't really know how to do, BEFORE I get all tangled up in the big project.   And, once again, it just sort of danced out of my fingers. 

Saturday morning I found a piece of dark blue linen that was just big enough.  I cut a piece of heavy cardboard to fit inside the back of the hoop behind the fabric.  I pricked out the design and pounced it onto the fabric.  Then I connected the dots with a Bohin white pencil.  Seeign it on the frame gave me some better ideas about where to go with the flower  so I adjusted it some .

Then I just started - simple as that.  The lesson here is to discover what my heart wants my fingers to do - to learn to get out of my own way - to stop thinking and efforting and struggling and all those other "ings" To just let it be and do that.  To trust my own inner process and my sense of beauty and joy. 

There will be more to it as I go along.  Designs very often have a way of evolving with the work.  And I will need some more colors and gold thread.  But for now what I see makes my heart happy.