Light and Shadow

I will be away today when all the challenge pieces are revealed so I am writing this in advance and will have to wait for a week to see everyone else's interpretations.

Similarly to Annabel I started with a bit of brainstorming and eventually settled on an interpretation of an image I had taken at the Eden Project in Cornwall. 

This pattern caused by the sun shining through the structure of one of the biomes had caught my eye on a visit this year.  I tried a few manipulations in Photoshop and altered the colours.

I eventually settled on the first image and printed it off onto printable cotton.  My idea was to work the whole piece in stitch in the way of Julia Caprara using a variety of random stitches.  Sadly I have had to put that idea to one side as an ongoing project as it was way too hard on my hands and left me in real pain after a short while of working.

Starting again I used the final image  and decided to work it on the embellisher, which has been languishing for far too long.  I started with a piece of old blanket and used a piece of pre-felt for the large dark area on the right.  I soon realised that this was  a mistake as it dominated the rest of the piece.  Having pulled off pieces to break up the edge and let some light in I worked across the whole piece and gradually it came into shape.  I used carded wool, chiffon scarf, wool tops and prefelt. 

I am not completely happy with the large dark shape and may manipulate it a bit more before I'm content.  Either way it needs further work and I will be adding some stitch to finish it fully.  It has struck me though that  in another orientation this looks rather like rock structures so that may be an area for further work.

While I found it a bit daunting to start to work with this theme I found as time went on that more and more ideas were arriving.  There are so many interpretations of Light and Shadow and I feel that I have barely scratched the surface with this challenge.  (Maybe that's the title for another challenge - Scratch the Surface?).  I'm looking forward to stitching into this piece and to the next theme.  I'd like to thank Annabel for inviting me into this group and to Marion for taking on the admin.