New Work - "Mask / face / head"

I was working on the piece in the last post and decided there needed to be some kind of mask / face / head somewhere. I started creating one on a separate, smaller hoop and about a month later I was finished and ready to add it. However the face / head that I ended up with was just too big. So, I decided to use it as the 'center point' of an entirely different work. I stitched it to some larger fabric pieces but it looked a bit naked all by itself, so I added some collage elements around it. I started with a few small scraps of black fabric and eventually added pieces of velvet, lace, trimmings, and other odds and ends including stitched over shapes, not unlike the star shapes I have been doing in previous work. My inspiration was African and Indian clothing and fabric I have seen adorned with various different items. I wanted to keep everything black on black as I have been doing, and of course a photograph does not capture this well.

The face / mask / head was made with metallic floss - both 'pointillized' and also stitched over with smoky monofilament floss, and white cotton floss.