Making Progress

Since my last post, I have sewn all the fabric pieces onto my collage-in-progress and I added more couched funky yarns.  Time to step back and evaluate it.  One way to see a work-in-progress a bit differently is to take a picture of it and make your evaluation from the picture.

image copyright RPS, please do not post elsewhere

Right away, I notice that the two dark purple lace pieces are aligned nearly the same way.  I like to have similar elements in a piece turned different ways.  I'm not going to rip one of them out, I will add another dark purple lace later, making sure to place it a perpendicular angle to the first two.  I've probably mentioned before, but it is a good idea to use each design element more than once in a piece.  I need to add one more of each of the purple laces, so this will be easy to fix.

Since I am using several different techniques in this collage, I like to keep switching back and forth in the application of them.  I'm not sewing all the fabric pieces at once, then the couching, etc.  Instead, I sew a couple of fabric pieces, couch a couple lines of yarn, add a lace trim, then back to fabric.  I'm not sure if it matters, but I would think that my back and forth method creates a more layered look.  Well, there's another future project to test my hypothesis...

Back to evaluating a work.  While I have a photo of the piece, I like to view the image in black and white too.  This allows me to see how I'm doing with contrast of value.

image copyright RPS, please do not post elsewhere

Clearly, I need to add some darker shades and some pale tints.  The fabrics, trims and yarns I have selected so far are too alike in value.  The same two lace pieces that are bothering me for the way I placed them are the only dark elements now.  It is important to have strong value contrasts to add more interest to a composition.  The background is a nice middle tone, most of the added pieces are about the same lighter value.  The more I look at this image, I think I might be OK if I add a few more dark pieces.  I have some work to do here!