Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Am I going to make it?

I have two weeks to finish this piece, get it framed and photographed and delivered to Iowa for this exhibit. What do you think? Any chance I'm going to make it?

This is the last in the series of the Three Fates (and no, I haven't made the middle one yet--waiting, still, for inspiration to strike. The first one is here.). This is "Atropos cut the thread of life." It is a photo of my Grandma Helen's hands--I asked her to pose for the photo at one of our Monday Night Dinners--so it has a lot of the familiar objects from those weekly family dinners in her kitchen--the blue and white checked table cloth, the maroon and cream china with the pastoral scene in the back ground, and Grandma wearing her favorite sweatshirt from Gig Harbor. Grandma Helen is 94 1/2 (She'll be 95 in December). She doesn't like the way her hands look--but I love them.
I've had a number of people ask me about the fabric I bead on--it is black silk noil that I buy from Denver Fabrics. I print my photo on archival paper, then cut it out to the exact shape I want to bead (in this case, a rectangle), and stitch it to the top of my fabric and then follow the photo as a guide. Someone recently commented that it was like paint-by-number, except with beads--and it is true, the cartoon does help in that way--but there are no numbers telling you what color to pick up--that's where the creativity comes in--you look at that color on the paper and decide what combination of beads is going to create the color effect you want when you step away from the piece.

2 comments:

Mary Timme said...

No Amy,
My blog is still there. Go to http://beadfluff.blogspot.com and I'm there.

My IP server is being a pill right now, but other than that, everything is fine. Today I can't send email very well, but the blog is working on my machine. Hmmmmmmmm.

I looked at Grandma Helen's hands and thought how beautiful is that! They are perfect for the piece. I love it. You have to deliver 3 pieces in two weeks? God bless you girl. I love this method of working especailly on a wildlife piece.

Amy said...

Oh good--it must have been my link--it must have been acting up. I have to finish just this one piece in 2 weeks--I'll deliver 5 pieces to Iowa--but four are already made. At 3 hours a square inch it takes a while...an estimated 81 hours for this piece--and I don't think I'm half way done.