Take it Further Challenge

OK! Where did July go?! One again I have arrived at the end of the month without even mentioning the TIF challenge. Sharon said at the start of the month ; "The challenge this month is perhaps a bit obvious but I am going to ask …What is it to be at the half way mark?" It doesn't seem possible that we are indeed at the mid-point of this challenge, and the mid-point of the year, in fact, past the mid-point of the year. I started off the TIF challenge with great intentions and they have slackened somewhat but I feel I am still working within the spirit of the challenge, if not on the challenge itself, then at least in my artistic journey.
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My piece for the July challenge is a piece I have been working on at my Tuesday afternoon class. You may remember several weeks ago we painted fabrics and threads. The next step was to consider some design principles. As a very simple introduction to achieving our own design our teacher told us to start with the number 8 (you may not be able to draw but you can write the number 8, right?). As you can see from the photo below we drew the figure 8 in various orientations and exploited the shapes in several ways.

As I explored the shape and from of the figure 8 it became obvious that there were many permutations and possibilities with the lines that make up the shape of '8'.

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The next step was to take any part(s) of the doodles that appealed and play about with them some more to find an appealing design. This part was quite hard I found.

My subconscious seems to have been preoccupied with angels and a cat but the design I decided on was the one in the bottom left corner (there were other scribblings but I seem to have lost them!).

Excuse the tacking stitches in the photo above, I have yet to remove them.

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The colours are totally wrong in this pic as they are much richer in life, but here is the result of my first venture into designing for textile in this way. I was guided along the way by my teacher but the design is basically mine. The felt triangles were from the felt we made using the J-cloth method. The yarns have been couched down and then french knots dotted about. I have added beads but have tried not to overdo the effect . The piece is about 6" x 4".

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In the spirit of TIF I have started work on a second piece using another piece of the material we dyed previously. I plan to echo the triangles and the snaking line on a similarly sized piece but you will have to wait to see it as it is only part completed. In case you're wondering it's the lovely organza at the end of the dying workshop and which coincidentally has a meandering line through it. All planned of course!!