A struggle

I can't believe it is such a long time since I posted. All that time I have been working on the abstract seascape piece, and having quite a lot of blocks, which also prevented me from doing any other stitching work, since I was determined to work through it. Initially, a few months ago, I printed out a displacement mapped picture of what I can't remember. I did it on cotton and again on extravorganza.
I admire Larkin Van Horn's beaded pieces, and wanted to try one, so I layered the pieces over a small piece of English felt ( I think it's rayon), and started on the beading. It took an age. Something I haven't worked out yet is how to mark where beads should go, and then take them off, so you can stitch them one by one.I made a frame for the piece by making needle and wet felted rovings into black batting, planning originally to put the piece on top. This was after trying out several batiks that I liked but didn't work from a distance. It didn't seem to have any logic, so I cut a window in the batting and put the piece underneath, which gave more of an underwater feel. I added the coloured stones thinking of the rivets in a porthole of a wrecked ship.
More struggles to link the piece with the dupion silk that I wanted to use as the canvas, tried out flowers, threads and seaweed ideas, but finally decided on the sunray penetrating the gloom of the deep.

Phew!

Now on to more ideas of using modified photos...