Progress on two fronts

By weaving for three hours solid this morning, I finished the wall hanging. I scrunch-dyed it in shades of pale orange, yellow, and gold, and then overdyed it again with yellow after deciding some sections were too pale.

And here it is (loose threads not yet clipped):

You really have to look close up to see the variegation, and I’m not 100% happy with it. There is a big blotch of orange in the top left corner, covering part of the phoenix, that looks like a mistake. I think if I were doing it over, I might try airbrushing rather than scrunch-dyeing, to get more control over where the dye goes. But so it goes.

Despite being not 100% happy with the variegation, I’m fairly happy with the piece. I’m thinking, though, of truncating it, like this:

I like the proportions of the truncated version better, and it allows me to focus attention on the color gradient by taking the portions where the color is changing most rapidly. But the bigger one is very nice as well. I’d love opinions!

Meanwhile, in muslin-land, I have more-or-less successfully draped a sheath dress, or rather half of one:

This is only the first step, though; for one thing, this version is nearly skin-tight. I’d like a dress you can actually move in, but which has some shaping. I need to go back and read up on adding ease to a garment. Or maybe I just need to play with it on the dress form until I have something I like. Quite possibly both.

Anyway, the next step after draping the muslin for the dress will be to re-do the draping in black fabric, and cover it with the crinkly black commercially woven fabric I bought last week. Then I can take a sample of the phoenix fabric and try draping my design against the crinkly black fabric. After that, one final test: can I walk/sit down in the dress?  Once I’ve done all that, I’ll know whether the basic idea will work.

Off to work on the book! I’m currently only one post ahead and want to get two to three weeks ahead, so I’ve got a lot of writing to do.