conundrum begone

 

A giant conundrum had me in its tentacles when I last posted to this blog: what bas relief effect did I want around my new girl's face? 

In deciding how to stitch a piece, the effect of the stitches is of keen concern. In this piece, I had used a black thread to stitch down the solid black lines in my drawing. My goal was to highlight the loose sketchy nature of the line. The fabric adjacent to those solid lines comes forward, offering a nice bas relief effect that seems to honor the lines.

The question was whether to stitch down, in a continuous line, the broken lines that circle the head, lines that I had drawn early in the process to generally mark where the head would be. I decided not to erase any of these these foundational lines, as I thought they gave the piece energy and movement. The lines also seem a bit mysterious. Why'd she put those lines there? 

To continue the idea of movement around the piece, I used an invisible (monofilament) thread to stitch parallel arcs in the background areas. These arcs help to bring the image forward.

I just delivered the piece to my favorite framer so he can mount it for me. I wrote about a new mounting method in an earlier post (click here to read about it). I'll post pix of the result later.

Anyhew, my conundrum is no more and I am much the happier Pam with the resolution!