My next piece in the Whitewashed series is about what's happening in the US right now with respect to the legislation of womens' bodies. It came about because The International Quilt Challenge's theme was "land/marks".
Because of the reading I had been doing with respect to the de-funding of Planned Parenthood; forced trans-vaginal examinations for women seeking certain services (including rape victims who wish to terminate a resulting pregnancy); employers being given the power to decide whether or not a woman should use birth control, Lisa Brown's speaking privileges revoked for using the word "vagina", and on and on...
So, as soon as I saw the challenge, I had this image in my head of a man, standing on a pile of women's naked bodies, with a big ol' flag, saying "I claim this land in the name of..."
I wasn't going to do that exact image, but it's what inspired the piece as a whole.
I knew that I needed a woman's body to represent all women - a woman who was the embodiment of iconic female sexuality- curvy, lush, sexually available.
I started out with my lutradur background, and picked the above three colours for her initial skin colour.
Having learned from my mistakes I knew I needed to build up the colour, so once her base colour was dry, I added water and more red and yellow ochre to make washes to give her skin a lovely multi-toned effect.
For part of the background, I also needed brown fabric in a certain colourway - and not having it in my stash, I turned to my needle felter and roving in the above shades - and laid 'em all out on an old chocolate brown pillowcase piece.
It looked like this before the actual needle felting, pinned and ready to go - you'll also note that I pulled some bits of thread out of my thread catcher to add to the mix. I hadn't done it before but assumed it would work out!
When it was felted, it looked like this - so I pulled some threads to stitch it all down.
And when I was done
that it looked like
this! I didn't do a great job taking a picture of it, but this fabric is really luscious in person - soft, rich looking, delicious (even if I do say so myself!) and and a much darker brown.
Come back on Wednesday for the next instalment in the progress - and on Friday for the big finish! See you then!
%2B2014%2BKit%2BLang%2B(small).jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
+threads+for+quilting.jpg)
+finished+fabric.jpg)
Posts
