Making changes, joining and finishing off

Why does it always take so long to finish off a piece of work? It doesn't seem to matter if I'm working with paper or fabric, or with print, photographs or mainly in stitch. It always takes me longer that I expect to get everything how I like it. 

The Tower piece I first showed as a small maquette in April, has needed many changes to the individual images that make up the final tower. This sort of piece in particular seems to evolve slowly. 

Since this is a 3D hexagonal piece with no practical possibility of printing the whole in one go at A3 size and then joining down one line, I'm considering several joins. Do I print out the separate strips of tower images in threes so I have only to make two sets of joins on the opposing sides of the piece, or do I print them out separately and join each one to its neighbour which makes it much easier to cut out the look throughs which are an integral part of the piece but may result in a distracting forest of thread ends? 

Next, I'm pondering how to make the joins to best effect. The options would seem to be joining with thread, with bent staples to reflect the metal structure of the original building, or using tape or small cardboard joins on the the inside of the piece. The card option seems clumsy and can be seen when looking down inside the piece and bent staples have practical issues as they are difficult to do consistently and the card can easily become damaged as photo 3 below shows. 

I have therefore opted for thread sewn through and tied either on the inside of the piece, or on the outside to make a feature of the join. A variation of the latter seems to offer the best option. 

I then have to sort out the imagery on the inside of the piece. I have opted so far to use a section of words from the small book, the initial images of which I showed here. I am still playing with the weight, opacity, size and font of the words to be printed on the reverse side of each face of the tower. 

So far, the size and opacity of the lettering needs more work as some of it jumps when the piece is viewed as a whole - and I may yet change my mind about this completely!

Walking the Line

Here, taking my mind, a pencil, a pen, ink, paint, paper, scissors - and much else besides including a ruler - for a walk in a new concertina sketchbook. 

I'll be responding intuitively to whatever last appeared on the page and adding next what seems appropriate. I may follow on with an idea, a colour, an image or a shape - or I may jump to something completely new and contasting. 

General early views ...

And details ...

Thus far, there seems to be much reference to work already completed, and especially to geometrical shapes (circles, squares and rectangles) and then, by contrast, there are organic shapes that meander haphazardly across the page (more of those another day). 

Marrying up the two and working across from one page to another seems to be the biggest and most interesting part of this whole excercise. 

I've no idea where this will lead. I'm hoping it will take me to new places and encourage me to free up my work and use new techniques.