A moth's eye

After the review of my work so far, and because of a feeling I have recently been having that I need to explore repetitive patterns more for this project, I found myself wanting to try out some ways of expressing an image of a moth's eye.

Link to page where I found this image

First, seeing how well shiny embroidery looks on a black coat dress, I used some metallic paint on plain black cotton, using metallic white for the highlights, and to suggest the wonderful patterns around the edges of the eye.

Then I sewed together 2 layers of fabric in a simplified version of the pattern here, and stuffed the resulting shapes. The fabric is some that I found in the remnants box of a fabric shop and looks as if it had been hand dyed.

Finally, I tried out layering a darker sheer fabric over the top, and cutting out crescents to make highlights out of the dyed fabric underneath. The horizontal wiggly lines are there because I thought these shapes are a bit like the heads of the cicada, which has a black line down the middle of it.

This worked better than I expected it to, although it gives a rather flatter impression than the original eye photo. Without the horizontal lines I could have stuffed it as well.