Choc-orange Challenge

I've just finished the Summer Challenge for my 3D5S group. The meeting was last weekend, and I didn't get there, but I had this project in mind and it turned into a personal challenge, so here it is: Choc-orange silk evening bag, with hand-spun wool cord. The choc-orange chocolate, courtesy of Ernest Hillier, a local chocolatier, no longer exists. I ate it as my reward as soon as I'd taken the photo. I wanted to catch some of the richness and sweetness of this particular chocolate combination, along with the extra tang that the orange provides.

3D5S--3 dimensions, 5 senses--is an inspiration group. We organise outings to inspiring places and then respond to our experiences in our art work--mostly textile art, but anything really. The break-up outing last year was to a chocolate cafe, hence my inspiration for this piece.

The summer challenge each year is to make a 10cm by 10 cm something in response to one of our group outings or a summer holiday experience. The challenge is designed to be quite broad in it's scope and in previous years I've made samples or fairly rough prototypes. This year I decided to make a real thing. I'm happy with the way the orange and brown silk interact in the bag and I quite like the cord I've made, but I'm not sure that it's strong enough for the bag--visually not physically. So I think I'll keep playing with that aspect. What I've got at the moment is a 6-ply cord--singles spun and overplied, then navaho-plied back the other way. The part I navaho plied was just the last bit left on one bobbin, the rest I've made as a 4-ply, but that definitely was too fine. I'm going to try twisting the cord--doubling it--one more time just as it is. If that doesn't satisfy me, I'll ply in an orange thread and see what that does to it. I wonder if that means I can buy myself some more lovely chocolates to eat as I continue to explore the possibilities:)