My next piece in the Whitewashed series is about what's happening in the US right now with respect to the legislation of womens' bodies. It came about because The International Quilt Challenge's theme was "land/marks".
Because of the reading I had been doing with respect to the de-funding of Planned Parenthood; forced trans-vaginal examinations for women seeking certain services (including rape victims who wish to terminate a resulting pregnancy); employers being given the power to decide whether or not a woman should use birth control, Lisa Brown's speaking privileges revoked for using the word "vagina", and on and on...
So, as soon as I saw the challenge, I had this image in my head of a man, standing on a pile of women's naked bodies, with a big ol' flag, saying "I claim this land in the name of..."
I wasn't going to do that exact image, but it's what inspired the piece as a whole.
I knew that I needed a woman's body to represent all women - a woman who was the embodiment of iconic female sexuality- curvy, lush, sexually available.
I started out with my lutradur background, and picked the above three colours for her initial skin colour.
Having learned from my mistakes I knew I needed to build up the colour, so once her base colour was dry, I added water and more red and yellow ochre to make washes to give her skin a lovely multi-toned effect.
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For part of the background, I also needed brown fabric in a certain colourway - and not having it in my stash, I turned to my needle felter and roving in the above shades - and laid 'em all out on an old chocolate brown pillowcase piece.
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It looked like this before the actual needle felting, pinned and ready to go - you'll also note that I pulled some bits of thread out of my thread catcher to add to the mix. I hadn't done it before but assumed it would work out!
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When it was felted, it looked like this - so I pulled some threads to stitch it all down.
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Come back on Wednesday for the next instalment in the progress - and on Friday for the big finish! See you then!
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love it Kit.
ReplyDeletethanks, oh anonymous one! :)
Deletelove reading your process. The creation is incredible
ReplyDeleteI love you. I wished we lived closer.
ReplyDeleteThats a fabulous rich base fabric youve achieved and that lass is one sexy gal.
ReplyDeleteIf shes to represent us women folks.........I can live with that shapely depiction lol
Very cool! I've actually been thinking about doing a similar quilt, only with a pack of birth control pills. Hmm... Such an important topic, and yes, such a baffling attack on us and our reproductive systems :(.
ReplyDelete