RUST EXPERIMENT

Being bored, I started cutting out rectangles from the group of fabrics I recently sun-dyed.  (A great group of fabrics, I really like the colors - and more than that - I love the fabric.  I need to find a source for it.)

I arranged the rectangles on a piece of fabric I had made in the recent workshop at Pratt.  It was one I made, with sad results, using a paper litho-plate technique.  It works well as a background.

I've taken numerous design classes and workshops.  I want there to be a 'formula', you know?  But, I'm realizing, there just isn't.  I can't say what makes a design work, for the most part.  But I can 'feel' when it does.  I just moved the squares around and around, until they 'felt' right.  I would take them off, and put them back and realized there are endless possibilities that work just as well as the next.  Hmmmm.

After I was tired of this game, I stopped at the latest arrangement.  Then I stitched around them to secure them to the background.

Then I dampened it and arranged some metal discs on it.  I wanted rusty circles!  It took two days until I was tired of watching it rust.  I had to re-wet under the discs the next day.  I removed the aggressive rusters and moved some of them to the lazy ones positions.

Here it is now.  I think I want to quilt around the rust circles.