Is plankton pink?

I have used some of the discharged silk from here, to make my A4 piece for the Contemporary Quilt group for this month, still on the theme of yellow. I'm pleased with this, although in some lights it veers very close to orange rather than yellow due to the sheen on the fabric, I think.



Yellow shot silk, brought back from India about 8years ago by my husband. Plankton shapes cut out of paper and used to make a silkscreen. Discharge paste applied through the silkscreen leaving behind the pale pink shapes. Hand-quilted round the shapes with weft threads drawn out of the sides of the fabric, and then experiments with machine quilted eyelets at various stitch widths. Some strands of threads stitched at the bottom of the eyelets to give a suggestion of small tentacles. Faced binding, which is a new technique for me.

I realised as I was making this piece, that there was a large empty space at top right, so I stitched another plankton shape there, without having the discharged colour within it. Some details below,


Discharged motif


Eyelet detail


Stitched motif


Attempt at showing tufted threads


Back showing faced binding.


This has definitely got my stitching mojo back, and some ideas abut machine trapunto on these motifs are being triggered after reading this book by Hari Walner.