My Square for Bev's Exquisite Corpse

Working on Bev's Exquisite Corpse was exciting because my square was the last square in her project. On the far right you will see the background fabric, a nice plain loosely woven neutral fabric. The clues on the square to the left of mine were Sara's painted background, a nice light muted purple color and some felted green fabric and a lovely leaf with a sheer background. All those were great inspiration for working into my portion. My first step was to paint the background a pale metallic purple, which looked rather flat.



The second step was to use a deeper purple, color cued from a gauze showing on the bottom of Annie's square, and use a leafy stencil to added over the metallic background.



Third step was to join into the lovely leaf from Sara's square. I cut out a blue leaf shape from my hand dyed silk organza scraps and embroidered it down with cotton embroidery floss. I tried to use stitches that looked as much like Sara's as possible.



The fourth step was using my felting machine to add some colors along the bottom edge that might create flow from the felted fabric along the bottom of Sara's square. I didn't have the colors that she used, so I used the Colorhue silk dyes to make some white roving match Sara and Annie's colors. I used single strands of cotton embroidery floss to add some small flower like shapes and beads. At this stage I had only worked on the right stage and bottom of the square.



The fifth step was stalled as I tried to make a decision about adding either a dragonfly, spider or another insect. I liked the idea of using a dragonfly, because I could use another transparent fabric like Sara's leaf. Then I made a decision that a spider and web, could be a nod to crazy quilting and putting a modern spin just might be fun. Keeping up the metallic tone of the square, I couched down silver threads for the base of the web and then machine and hand stitched the other parts. I knew Bev had two young children and thought a spider they could adjust somewhat might appeal to them. So instead of using thread, I used very thin wire and beads to make the spider.



The sixth step was going to the top of the square and trying to blend my square with Annie's square above. Most of what I saw was wool roving in a nice green and some purple and of course the purple gauze. I used a hand needle felting tool to work the wool roving over the gauze and added some green and purple beads. Looking back I think the roving was too neatly pushed in and needed to be loosened up.

The seventh step was going in and pulling out some parts and adding the silk flowers with beading. I didn't have flowers that matched, so I hand painted white flowers with fabric paints. I think adding more leaves like Sara's would have given more balance to the square. My square felt a bit lopsided color wise. My hope was that whatever was in Annie's square might add some balance, since I could see some green in the 1/2 inch poking out.

The happiest part of working on this project was that I finally had a square that flowed into the work of the other players. And I did take photos of this square.