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But no...I bit the bullet, fused it in place and stitched it down with my walking foot and a subtly variegated thread (Superior's King Tut, colour #992). Here it is on my design wall, trimmed, but not finished (I'm planning to do a facing):
Unfinished, it's currently 16.5" W x 17" L -- or not quite square. So far I've opted to leave out any 'embellishment', in keeping with the clean, peaceful look of the piece. (By 'embellishment', I mean hand stitching or thread painting of tufts of grass here and there; adding 'grain' to the wood of the fence -- and like that.)
The fence is not centred, but not very far off-centre, either. I'm not sure I like it. I got to thinking about the Golden Ratio in art, and what this would do to the piece. If I kept the length and altered only the width, I'd have to narrow it significantly; it would end up 10" W x 16" long when finished. That would put the fence right in the centre of the bottom of the piece -- totally out of whack!
Before doing any more mathematical gymnastics, I pondered the current sizes of stretched canvas that are available (though I'm in Canada, generally our canvases come from the US so they're in inches rather than centimetres). Believe it or not, there's a blog post about that. Even more informative was the author's related post which included a table of the required sizes in Europe (citing France as the authority -- with sizes recommended for 3 different types of paintings - figure, landscape and marine scape) as well as an analysis and rating of those most used for painting in the in the U.S.
And what was most interesting about the analysis? The fact that the most popular sizes (most used for painting) in North America (the ones the author ranked with the most stars) had a ratio (one side to the other) of 0.75 to 0.80. The Golden Ratio is 0.618. The canvas sizes closest in proportion to the Golden Ratio (at 0.65 to 0.71) were the ones used more often for personal photos, art prints and photographic prints but not for painting.
Hmmmm...
So...what about my textile piece? Not a painting, but not a photograph or print, either...Hopefully, though, a 'painterly' expression of a landscape in fabric....
Ideally, to keep the width at 16" I should have made it longer (20" instead of 17"), for a ratio of 0.80 -- but I didn't even start out that long, so forget that! Sigh.
The next idea is to trim it on both sides, and reduce it to 11" W by 14" L...shown below by the magic of photo cropping...bringing the fence farther forward, and cutting out most of the sky...
Here are the two (almost) "side by each"...
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| Roughly 16" W x 16.5" L (finished) |
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| Roughly 11" W x 14" L (finished) |
I confess that looking at them like this, the right-hand one is growing on me...but I might have to effect a compromise, so that I don't cut out so much sky.
Any ideas? I have to have the thing faced and finished by month-end!
Now to link up to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday...and go and do some quiet, simple piecing. My brain hurts!
