After the Harvest

"After the Harvest," 17.25" x 30.5"

It's Friday....and time for participating in Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" blog hop.  I must admit, I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I have been working hard on straightening up my sewing room, trying to beat the cold weather outside, mourning the loss of many of my favorite large goldfish to a raccoon, and re-working "View from the Abyss" for another show.

So, I was a bit annoyed when I went to my photo files and couldn't find what I intended to write about tonight....but then I realized that I never showed you the result of the work I started in Montana for "The View from Here," a SAQA regional show.  So, here it is.  I'm not entirely happy with it...but I think that that is quite often the result when you imagine something and think you know how you're going to do it and then you realize that that won't work.  You see, I intended to show a cornfield which had been harvested right in the early part of December or so...Here in this part of the Midwest  snow comes and blows across, catching in the stubble.  I thought I would represent that by taking strips of sheers which were shredded on the edges...but when I tried that, it just didn't look right.

So, when that didn't work, I couched strips of confetti yarn down, then hand stitched over the top with hand painted variegated perle cotton I purchased at the Shibori Dragon.  The confetti gave the feeling that it was loose pieces of corn leaves fluttering in the wind, which is pretty much the feeling I wanted to express.  The ground is some of that rust dyed fabric I wrote about here and the sky is hand painted.

The trees didn't turn out quite the way I imagined.  I hand stitched in blacks, grays, and lavender over the top of netting, then cut the netting away to give the trees the branch effect.  I stitched this for hours in the car while driving around Montana and then back to Olympia.  Needless to say, all I could see were cottonwoods with leaves on, so I fear that they look more like cottonwood rather than oaks and maples which line the fence rows of Ohio and Michigan...and more Michigan than Ohio!

I'm tempted to rip the quilting out of the sky and do it over again....I think that the pattern obliterates the shading in the sky, which as you can see from the first picture look very much like the Midwestern sky.
I wanted to indicate wind, but these are just far too tight.  I was also struggling yet again with my hands. The barn sort of bugged me too...I wanted to thread paint it, but in this too I don't have the control I once did.

So, I hope you enjoy it, and take the opportunity to go to some of the other blogs.  I have to get back to finishing up the re-vamp of "View from the Abyss" and look forward to taking in the last of my big ceramic pots from outside and washing windows.