Karen Kamenetzky Fiber Art

I can be very decisive in many parts of my life but choosing colors is not one of them. I love playing with color, the aha moment when two colors next to each other are perfect and am usually happy with my final decisions. But the process itself can be frought with self doubt and procrastination. It’s like picking my way along a path with constantly branching choices.

Auditioning

For the next many weeks there will be a series of auditions and callbacks. There will be lots of moments when I will feel I’ll never find the exact right color for this part! And with a commission, the clients color preferences further complicates the decision algorithm in my measly brain. It’s a messy business.

But when I find the right color- I feel I’ve decisively figured out the next few steps on this path and for a brief time my confidence and well being is restored!

Callbacks

Till the next color choice…

I thought of calling this post “The Unmentionables” because it’s really about how I construct the “foundation garments” so to speak.
After measuring and remeasuring many times, the batting was cut with some extra all around to compensate for the effects of  future dense stitching. A layer of muslin was fused on to keep the texture of the batting (Warm and Natural”) from showing up later. The inner curve was drawn onto the fused muslin the cut made. I did some rough sketching directly on the muslin to orient myself to this 7 foot expanse and then glued on cotton cording to create raised ridges that emphasize key sweeps of line.

batting/muslin with cotton cord

The background dyed silk charmeuse fabric was then fused onto this base with extra around the edges for later finishing. The richly varigated colors didn’t want to be photograghed so it looks redder than in real life.

With background silk fused on

I then stitched along either side of the cording to make those lines sharp.

I should get sponsorship from Pellon because I’ve used over a bolt of Wonder Under fusible web so far on the dyed fabrics for this project!

The grand vision for this piece has already gone through several evolutions and I’m sure will go through more in the future. Originally it was going to be about 7+ feet long and about 4 feet high. That seemed daunting to handle and I felt it might look like a block of wallpaper on the curved wall where it will live.

So I proposed splitting it into two horizontal parts:

rough sketch for curved wall 1

Everyone seemed happy with this, But then I had the brainstorm to make the separation between the two parts a curve that would echo the lines in the piece:

Alternate shape

I got a thumbs up for that and so submitted a sketch with the new shape:

Design in grayscale

This started as a color study-but my pastels and colored pencils ended up looking garish. So I put it into grayscale ( a very useful tool in Photoshop!) and did some photoshop tweeking. This is generally my working sketch at the moment…though the internal elements will morph as I go along.