Cycles of Time

This is Kalachakra, completed just last night.  It measures 27.5 x 15.5 inches and is entirely hand stitched/hand quilted.  Only the outside perimeter of the circles were actually sewn on with straight stitches, everything else is quilted together, including the seed beading.

What's here is five layers of fabric, including the backing, and no batting.  The backing and foundation fabrics are recycled table linens, shiboried earlier this year.  The gray fabric with black squares was black linen, shibori discharged three years ago.  The center green piece with black swirls on it is shiboried muslin, then deconstructed screen printed, then had textile paint applied over a rubbing plate.  The center circles are hand dyed muslin, soy wax batiked and then discharged.

I've used a variety of threads, but mostly Gutermann 30 wt. silk.  There are only very limited colors of that thread available locally but I found a terrific place online -- Craft Connection -- that has all the colors, sells them for less than I can get them in Eureka, charges almost nothing for shipping (less than $2 for First Class), and my order placed online last Saturday arrived on Thursday.  I'm impressed.  I'll be back.

The sale at my Etsy Shop ends next Thursday, December 15.   I'm closing the shop after the sale.  I'll be putting it on vacation mode but I don't know yet whether I'll be back.  Etsy was a terrific place for me to sell spinning fiber and weaving yarn, but has only been so-so for sales of finished artwork.  Most of the work that I've sold there didn't sell until I'd discounted it a couple of times.  And I don't want to do that any more.   I'd rather sell less work now and get a price that is more in line with its value, or not sell at all.  Or wait until someone contacts me about possibly buying a piece rather than my marketing it, per se.

I've just gotten so tired of all the effort involved in trying to sell and all the competition you have to deal with at every level.  I'll also likely be killing my Facebook Page for pretty much the same reason ~ there are too many pages, every business in the world has one now, page reach is down since FB's last round of changes, and it means nothing anymore when people "like" a page because they won't necessarily ever be back or ever see or read your posts there.  You might be asking yourself, "Didn't we have this conversation a couple of months ago, the quit FB thing?"  Yeah, we did.  But I kept my page.  Not for much longer, though.

 Have a great weekend!