Sentinelles Taking Shape

I have been hard at work but seem not to have achieved as much as I wanted. I was determined to get the blue sentinelle to a place where i could  finish the hand stitching later and be reasonably happy to move onto the next sentinelle. I  tend to finish one piece of work and then move onto the next. I have been hand dyeing fabric but to my chagrin found, that, despite measuring twice I manage to cut all the pieces for dyeing the backgrounds for my sentinelles  6 cms too short- and now I have run out of fabric.I had two pieces left of the right length thank goodness and they are now dyed and one is printed and basted and I have started stitching and the next is ready to print.

 So I was super glad when some khadi fabric arrived via Fiona Wright of Creative Arts Safaris . Khadi is hand spun and hand woven cotton fabric made  in little villages all over India by artisan weavers. Fiona sent me a couple of different weights to experiment with- I love the idea that this cloth is  entirely hand made by a real person- it was Ghandi's idea to get India together and working together and to sustain the little people.Here is some more information

Anyway it dyes beautifully-  slightly dullish but the colour is deep and good- so watch this space- if you are interested in me dyeing some of this special cloth just contact me-it is the ultimate slow cloth- hand spun, hand woven and hand dyed and with washing  is quite soft though the structure of the fabric is good.And the price for an entirely hand made fabric will surprise you.I have also worked with it previously here

So here is my  sentinelle now and they measure life size- about 175 cm by 60 cm- I want them to be like a person presence- I am showing progressive steps:

There is still some work to do on the medallion shapes- haven't decided what to put in them for this sentinelle yet ( though I have some plans for the others) simply because this  sentinelle turned out so differently than expected- the medallions are a hark back to medieval times when people wore badges on pilgrimages to identify who they were and what their pilgrimage was- block printing was used to create the often paper badges that were worn- so the idea for the "badges" is that they will identify the sentinelle.

Thanks for all the feedback on my last post- it is sometimes good to push on with unfamiliar colour and  think hard on how to get the result you are after- I am still not certain for this sentinelle but I do feel she rules them all, somehow, because she has taken a lot of work.