new Digital to Textile challenge piece!

(This is my entry for the Digital to Textile blog -- be sure to check out the other challenge members' work in that blog!)

Oh, my, did I learn a lot from this challenge piece!

As I wrote in my in-progress-blog entry, the multiple grids in the challenge photo were my inspiration for this piece. Here is a crop from Carolyn's photo:

This time I departed from my approach of creating digital images inspired by the photo, printing them, and experimenting with stitching. For this challenge, I wanted to use only the shapes as my starting point.

I embarked in an adventure in transparency. Inspired by the beautiful Korean pojagi method of patchwork(click to see examples), I dyed oodles of small pieces of silk chiffon and organza. I tried to create pojagi seams, but they ended up far less beautiful than the original style, but swell nonetheless. Here's a picture of one:

I made many many mistakes along the way, but I am finding that mistakes are a really good thing -- and they lead to the wondrous "Aha!" moments that inspire me to exclaim aloud in delight, even when nobody is round to hear my glee.

Here's my finished piece, up on the design wall:

I loved dyeing the silks -- I used ColorHue dyes I had learned about in a workshop with Glennis Dolce. My fave piece is the large pumpkin-hued patch at the upper right. There is just a suggestion of red throughout the fabric, and it shimmers just so. (You'll find out why I used such a large piece there in a moment!)

So, this piecing took me for-ever, and I think I rejected more seams and color combinations than I used. But I just fell in love with the luminosity of the textile.

Since the grids in the photograph were in layers, I thought it might be interesting to layer a fused glass piece on top of this silk grid.  Using the photo as inspiration, I designed my glass work. Here it is before it went into the kiln:

...and here it is two days later, when it came out (and after I drilled holes in it for mounting)!

So, here comes another challenge. How am I going to mount these two transparencies? I prepared a piece of Plexiglas, drilling holes in it to allow me to attach the silk and the glass, and attach a heavyweight fishing line for hanging the piece on the wall.

And here it is, all tidily mounted...

...or is it so tidy? It turned out that mounting on transparencies is a nightmare. Though I use transparent fishing line, the holes in the Plexiglas can show through. Here is where the biggest offender was, one I had drilled for the hanging wire/line:

I will have to design for this when I use transparent textiles in the future.

Two things, though. I discovered that I love love love working with transparency, and that I double love love love layering transparent fused glass with transparent textiles!