I have no idea where this idea came from. It may have first occurred to me while I was working on the pieced winter tree and mulling over the ideas of Cubism. I seem to remember that one of the Cubists (Braque?) used a fish on a plate as part of a still-life, and the combination of the fish shapes on an oval platter was appealing.
The cubist fish
This design incorporates painted fabric for the background, the platter, and the fish bodies, and the fabric was then overstitched with layers of thread. The whole thing was a real pain to stitch out. In the first place it’s a very large design, and in the second place I had to stitch through three layers of fabrics painted with acrylic paints, and the paint makes the fabric very hard and brittle. But the result was interesting, and this one is going in our September exhibition