Stitching the herd

Last week, I had the paper resists ironed onto the wool. Now, I'm sewing them down:

I baste the paper down, to make sure it doesn't move, Sew the dark thread around, then stitch the black wool over the paper.

Wrapped with the reddish-brown wool, and into the oven. I placed 2 panels, one n either side of the darker wool. This time, I let it heat for an hour, then opened it up, and re-rolled it, so that both sides were equally colored.

And here's the first 2 sections, laid out on an old towel. Look at that rich rusty color!! 

When I cut off the black wool, I've got a nice dark gray.

Cutting off the rest of the paper resist, exposing the results. This reminds me of doing bronze casting in college, where you have so many hours, days of work, and don't get to see the results until the very end.

A before machine and an after. Very good, but will it sing? Unlike my Anthropocene Coat (which is on white wool), this one is on tan wool, and doesn't have quite the same visual punch.

About those dark coats/jackets that I use to obtain these colors: some of the dark coats look exactly the same after boiling. Others, like the blue ones, show color-leached images. This brown jacket showed great dye movement: 

On this boiled brown jacket section, you can see the darker color(where the paper resist prevented the color from leaving) the black lines (which transferred onto the tan jacket and onto this brown jacket) and a pale greenish section, where ALL the brown dye has leached out! I'll use these boiled sections as the background for the herd piece. You can see it at the bottom of these next photos:  

So now I take the boiled results, and see how I can present them most effectively. This is a slightly cropped version of the first composition, and here's another:

So I'll play around with this one and sew it all together, and start planning how to do a better version, on white wool....

.....a short while later.....

No I won't. I can't leave well enough alone. This piece is so close, but would be even better if it were darker, with more contrast. So before I lose my nerve, I'm going to re-boil it. This could ruin what I've got so far, or make it better.

I re-printed the images, and ironed them on (without cutouts). This will protect the work I've done so far, but leave the background open to more color.

Hot from the oven, unwrapping while the stained liquid drains. Oh please oh please oh please.....

It worked.....BIG sigh of relief...

The first version is , maybe, just slightly prettier, but the second version sings. I love the way the uncut resists(in the second boiling) kept the original color in the spaces between the legs.

Now it just needs the finishing work....

Any comments? Email me at dianesavona@aol.com