QUEUING (Weekly Art Project #13; inspired by The Alhambra)

At last it had finally come, our timed entrance into the incredible Nasrid Palaces, the moment I had been waiting for for so long........and clearly hundreds of others had too.

There were a LOT of us queued up for our 1pm entrance!  

As with most queues it snaked over steps and around corners & moved very very slowly. The above photo is taken from the inside looking out at the tail end of our queue.  I didn't have time to line the camera up properly, but I'm so glad I snapped it, because it does capture the essence of part of the whole experience. Anticipation. Being there but not quite IN there yet!!

It was this photo that I wanted to base today's weekly art project on.  Could I get a sense of the enormous numbers of people who come to visit this place?

 I also still have my ticket.  Could I incorporate it, or reference it in some way?

The drawing book came out & I drew what I saw & allowed my mind to play with a few different ideas. Eventually I reined those ideas into what MIGHT work in a 20cm square!

 

I made a decision that I needed to make a human shaped stencil.  Out came the knife & an old index page from a folder. I planned to use both positive & negative shapes, so I cut carefully. In the background of this photo you can see a couple of other tools I wouldn't be without!

A plan was drawn up, fabrics were chosen & it was time to sit at the sewing machine.

 

  There were going to be two 'outlines' , so the first one I stitched into place was the lower level one. I wouldn't cut it back yet though.

I then carefully lined up my upper outline fabric, complete with lines drawn on to guide where the sewing machine needle was to go.

During the process of sewing, I decided to vary the colour of my cotton, just to make it more interesting.

It was now time to start cutting back.

Here's how it went...

There was a lot of fiddly cutting in this project & to be honest, I think there was too much. If I'd kept the inner circle of repeated bodies to just 3 fabrics, I don't think the fact that they are body shapes would have been quite so lost.

The varying width stripes that frame the inner circle are taken from the bar code of my ticket.  I like the varying thicknesses & the appearance of some of the coloured fabrics.  However, I am very disappointed with the messiness of the lines.  This is because the black fabric was too loose a weave for such closely stitched lines.  This is a very important lesson for me to keep in mind. For the scissors to cut a less hacked looking line, they actually need enough room to get in there to cut!

You may be wondering about my rather odd choice of fabrics.  The coloured ones are all repurposed from well worn shirts.  The colour choices reflect some of the tile colours illustrated on the ticket & being shirts, they also reference people.

Although I'd make a couple of changes to this outcome were I to do it again, I'm still very happy with it as it achieved what I wanted it to. It is most definitely not a disaster & I am very happy with how the design process went. All in all a very good day of exercising my contemporary reverse applique skills!