We have a winner!

  There were 81 entrants! Thank you all for playing!

And the winner

My copirate will be here tomorrow for a bit and we will be drawing the winner of the giveaway around noon. 

If you haven't already entered, just drop your email in that loud turquoise box over there on the right. You get one shot at some Dirty Threads and no spam, only a heads up for when Prophets Tango is available.

done, but for the maker's mark

 

mummification, day 2

 

All the tools and materials responded just as I remembered except I couldn't get the lid off the jar of liquid matte medium so I gouged a nice little hole in it, poured what I needed, and plugged it with tape when I was finished. No studio should be without a roll of duct tape.

The heavy matte gel is as thick as library paste. The kind that was so tasty in elementary school. I only needed it for the edges and in places where the cloth was three or four layers deep.  It's easy to thin to whatever consistency is called for.

I stayed away from the bright white stitching. The stitch lines stayed crisp.

The damasks soaked the medium up like kitty litter.

I was even able to convince that uneven edge that closer to a right angle would be more pleasing to the eye.

This piece will be ready for its photoshoot tomorrow.

the process

"The Bruised Heart" will be my first guinea pig. Finished back in the Fall, it's my favorite from the year. October, when the country seemed to be eating itself like the Ouroboros. We were all wound up pretty tight, especially here in Georgia.

I still haven't settled on the orientation for this one. My perennial problem, deciding which end is up.

This is the easy part. I've left the edges of the finished piece loose so I can fiddle the edges into line when I start working the gel medium into the cloth. 

I'll keep going back to the tutorial so I won't forget all the little nuances that I worked with and around all those years ago.

Being mindful of how the next step can darken the cloth. 

Slowly. slowly.

I have a lot of detail shots of this piece to document how it will change. See just how much I can control. And how much the cloth will do what it will.

Kill your darlings, they tell all writers. The scene that inspired this piece lives on. Dark and dangerous. A switch tripped for the main characters. Everyone right at the place of no return.