Final Personal Assessment part 4

Integration

As mentioned in the previous post, I decided to trial a new direction on this piece,  and "........  create a lace like structure for the panels that would sit behind the metal frame, so the texture would show through and link it to the body of piece."

To that end I tried to sketch what I'd seen in my mind's eye. Bearing in mind that I had decided I needed a better way to integrate the metal frame than I had discovered so far.

PAP 1a

Then I painted some cartridge paper with black acrylic and worked it out properly with a white pastel pencil.

PAP 1

The next step was to decide how to translate the sketch into stitch, so I made my first pattern using a loose interpretation of the above sketch. I measured the distance on the frame to the top of the light structure for this first panel because this is going to be the most difficult area to maintain transparency and hide the structure.

PAP 2

My first panel was created on 2 layers of water soluble medium. 

PAP 3

PAP 4

PAP 5

PAP 6

When I washed away the W/S medium I was careful to leave enough behind to make it stiff enough to make a stable panel. However once it was dry I knew it wouldn't be opaque enough to hide the light fitting.

PAP 7

But it does appear to have integrated the metal frame more effectively. Both frames have been coated with  cream emulsion. The one on the LHS has been wrapped before painting, I think the RHS one works better.

So, back to the problem of concealing the light fitting. For this I returned to the velum, but I had a problem with stitching with no thread in the machine as it stops after about 20 stitches to let you know the threads broken! This is very disruptive to smooth FME stitching and may not do my machine any good over the long term. So I gave up and machined the piece with thread and just left very small areas without thread.

PAP 8

My next step was to put these 2 layers together, so that I could take advantage of the first one to get the maximum effect of the light shining through the FME'd lace structures but the velum layer would give me the coverage I needed for the light structure.

PAP 9

You can see from this image that the sample panel wasn't quite long enough to cover the bottom of the lamp and also I will have to think about grading the velum so it doesn't make a straight line where it joins the thread panel.

PAP 10

PAP 11

PAP 12

And just to check that it'll work when the light is off.......

PAP 13

Getting there, but still more obstacles to resolve.