Saturday, August 18, 2012

Expanse of Shippo

Since the Shippo piece is not the "normal" JEC Phase 4 piece, I thought I'd give it some discussion.
My JE group found this piece from the JEC catalog. We consulted with Kay Stanis who approved it as a viable substitute. The original one in the catalog is gold and silver on white. Mary Alice Sinton supplied a sage colored silk fabric, and we came up with antique copper and honey gold for the colors. The piece arrived with the design printed on. Unfortunately on stretching it onto the frame there was no way to get the circles to be circular and the lines to be straight, nor was there a way to remove the printed lines. Finally I turned the fabric over and tissue-basted the entire design onto the back side.

[As this is a Phase 4 substitute, the main techniques were metal thread couching - round-and-round, to-and-fro, and vertically held fuzzy effect. These are the same techniques as the JEC Phase 4 - Karahana]

When it was done, I did not like it - the original black design lines were showing through from the back. After everybody got tired of hearing me moaning about it, Mary Alice suggested I put in some "mists" lines as a distraction. She mentioned that it is the standard technique in JE to cover up mistakes. So that is why this piece has the (single #1 honey) gold couched lines, top and bottom, added to the original design. As an aside subsequent orders for this piece do not have the design printed on the fabric.

When the judge saw it at the GPR seminar, she questioned the black design lines, which my JE friends were able to explain away, so that I squeaked by and got a ribbon. Whew!

So here are some pics of the piece in progress, as well as the final result. Before the mists were added...


You can vaguely see the black lines from the back if you click on the image.


Detail


At the GPR seminar




No comments:

Post a Comment