Finishing Off.

It ain't finished 'til the fat lady sings?  Sometimes.  Other times, something feels as if it ought to be finished, but continues to niggle at you.  Over the years, I've come tor realise that the only thing to do is to put a piece like that aside, and let the unconscious work out what needs to be done.  It can take a while....or not...

You may remember this piece; I talk about it here. And it has been annoying me ever since.  Predominately because it's boring.

Not to mention that it somehow felt too wide.  Today, I worked out what to do with it.  I've been rereading 'Structure of the Visual Book' by Keith A Smith.  It was talking about folded books, and gave an image of an accordion book, not unlike the ones I've been making, except that the folds were very frequent.  So, when I glanced at the piece, I thought...I wonder if I could turn it into an accordion book... and started playing around with the necessary folds.  In reality, though, it was obvious that the section at the far end, with the starfish, really wouldn't be happy with that treatment.  The folds, though...they were interesting... soft folds, not pleats, folded so that the words are easy to see, closer together.  So I tacked them into place...and that wasn't easy; stitching through three folds of Evolon is heavy going, and involved forcing the needle through them.  And I ended up with this...

 So...not so wide... soft folds suggesting the waves at the beach... the paint treatment not so dominant...definitely better.  It's still by no means the best thing I've done, but I can live with it now.
I decided to leave the stitches in... by the time I'd got them there, I was pretty well exhausted.  The should really have been white, on reflection, and I might replace them at some point, though I did add some brown stitches at the bottom right, just to balance it out.

Is the fat lady singing?  Nah, she's going for a lie down...