Pleiades Door - Sky & Ground

The extra blues and browns arrived!  Over the past several weeks, I've cut a bunch of squares for the sky and ground and have been spending hours arranging and rearranging them, squinting, and taking thumbnail shots in order to evaluate the overall value and color.  It's still a work in progress, but I think they're pretty close!  We have 22 different blues in the sky, and around 50 different browns and greens for the ground.  Might still need to cut three or four more and replace a few of the lighter greens so that they blend better.  (The mountains and tree will come back later.)  This morning I'll start planning the final constellation and finish a full size pattern for the door.  

 

New Project!

 Very excited to be starting a new project.  This one is a commission and needs to be washable, so it'll be mostly pieced, with a bit of applique for the mountains and the tree.  My client provided the design, which turns out to be reminiscent of Magritte, one of my favorite artists!  This sketch is still a bit of a work in progress, depending on how we decide to do the lighter sky. The dark sky in the sketch currently includes a photo of the Pleiades, but I'll be using fabric with stars for the final one. 

While I wait for the blue and brown fabrics that I've ordered to arrive, I'm practicing piecing a smaller version of the doorway so that I get it right when I do the larger piece.  I'm using David Sirota's paper-piecing technique, which is just perfect and sooooo much easier than if I'd done it the traditional way.  I wasn't sure if I'd remember how to do it, since the workshop I took with David was a few years ago, but it all came right back as soon as I tried it!  Of course, none of these are the final fabric choices, they're just what I had in my scrap bin...and as you can see the proportions aren't those of the final pattern either.  I don't usually like to take the time to do mock-ups or studies in advance, but sometimes a little extra planning goes a long way.