Ndebele House
30" x 20", July 2024
Cotton fabrics, origami and craft papers, ink stamping and painting. Needlepoint on 13-mesh canvas, Planet Earth Fiber 100% silk yarn. Machine-quilted along fabric seams, finished with facings.
Technical challenges:  Designed and stitched the needlepoint first with no larger plan in mind, deciding only later to park it in a landscape. Made the curved-piece background and then had to cut out a perfectly sized window to insert the canvas. My self-invented, complicated method for stitching it in place did not go smoothly even though I had tested it with smaller components first. The ink stamping for the grass and trees did not go smoothly either, being both too light and too blotchy, so used very fine paintbrushes and toothpicks to darken it. The papers used for the fence and sunbeams were fused on and instantly began to flake off; reinforced edges with fabric glue. Added more trees and landscape elements with fused fabric.
Take-away (again): Piecemeal assembly with no overall plan resulted in a few lucky accidents but mostly made the process harder. Design first, then build.