First Colony

 I took a few process pics while making the latest, which is an assembly piece.
It began with a yard and a half of silk habotai and a similar sized chunk of reemay.
First step was to paint the reemay in the color pattern I wanted, beginning with the lightest color which outlined the shapes.

First white, then naples yellow, then began mixing some iron oxide in.

 I segued all the way to deep purple at the centers.

 Then I painted the silk in the same pattern but with the gradation going the opposite way- dark around the outside, light in the middle.

the silk, painting done.

fusible was then applied to the reemay, and I melted a pattern in it with a soldering iron.

here are 2 of reemay cutouts laid on top of the silk. 

this is the silk and the reemay, all fused together and ready for the preliminary quilting.

I put it on the machine with just felt as a backing, and sewed it all, and then cut them apart.

After I turned all the edges under, I reassembled them in the original pattern. I auditioned a lot of different colors of silk dupioni for the background, and finally chose a honey-to purple iridescent that I had overdyed with rust.   I traced the outline of the shapes on the silk with chalk, and quilted just the background.here you can just see the chalk outlines,

this is the quilting pattern

I then appliqued stitched the reemay and silk shapes over the quilted background.

this is a detail of the finished thing, am going to wait a bit before posting the completed piece.