Big Doorway Emerges

If you've been idly wondering how those floating motifs work with the doorway theme, since you can't read my mind which is where all the art planning takes place, I thought I'd post this.

This is the first outline of the first part of the doorway. The motifs will float across it as they're developed -- one already does, as you see -- and there will be more lines to reinforce the shape visually as I go.  You see pins holding the couching thread in place here, so as not to lose the shape as I go, since markings wear off the fabric very fast.

The usual problem with scribing an arch is to get the curve working, and rather than resort to endless math computation ending in a wobbly result, I look around for an object already the size and curve I want. This can be a lengthy search, but this time it wasn't.

The  round metal dish I've been keeping my supplies for the project in, is just the ticket.  So I drew around it without emptying it, living dangerously with all those little containers of beads, and you see a nice result.  I reset the pins a couple of times to get the straight part straight and the curved part reasonably symmetrical.  

Unusual for me to be particular about a shape to the point of not freehanding it, but for this piece, the archway needs to be a firm readable contour, against which the freeform shapes can play and work better.  Just sayin'.

There's another work going on, too, but the progress is so slow that there's not much to show you yet.  It's the portable piece, the stitching on white silk with stumpwork one, a flower with leaves, maybe a waterlily, maybe a chrysanthemum, jury still out, not my design, or I'd know!   I can take it in to stitch-in evenings, unlike the Big Doorway, which is definitely not portable, what with the size and the different threads and the beads and different needles and all that.

I found today that I need to stand to work on this, just like old times, never sat in the studio.  I have it on a wooden cabinet with the edge sticking out far enough for me to work from underneath, and a good height for me to work at.  One big reason never to sit to make art is that you have to see it straight in order to understand it.  No use sitting and looking across the work as you go, since though we hardly notice it, that gives us a warped image.