A different approach

Having made my crocodile partial face too small, I tried again this morning. I must have been tired.
I had enlarged the image and printed it out on silk again. But then I used Vliesofix and put it on the wrong way round - extremely annoying, except I couldn't be bothered being too annoyed.

So I then decided to take a different approach.
I have been playing around with fabric collage for several items lately, some larger and some quite small: the banner quilt and a much smaller piece for my interest group, machine embroidery, at the Victorian Embroiderers' Guild. We have been asked to use an image and interpret it, then leave another image for the next person. I thought an abstract interpretation would be good. It is only about 15cm x 10cm (that's a guess because I can't be bothered going and measuring it. Getting the message about energy levels?).

I only interpreted the rocks. 

So, for the mystery piece, I laid out some background fabric onto some wool batting (it was left over from a project from years ago and was the right size), attached it to the backing and then laid out some small bits of fabric. As it is a small piece, about 20cm x 18cm, they were quite small bits of fabric. As I have said many times, it pays to keep all the scraps.

Then I sewed them down and realised that I would only need a couple of colours for my thread.

I discovered the self-threading ability of my sewing machine. I have had if for nearly a year and haven't used it yet. This is because I had my free lesson and the person teaching me said she hated using it, so I have done my own threading ever since. But I wanted to use a thicker thread today (I had put in a slightly bigger needle) and decided that I wasn't going to be able to do it without help.

Out came the instruction book - lo and behold! it was easy.

Then I decided it needed something extra and I found some knitting wool in my stash (it serves for my tapestry weaving and my sewing, but not for knitting). I couched that down.

Remembering my last disaster, I had allowed room for it to shrink by making it a bit bigger than the finished size. Knowing that it has to fit in with many other pieces, I started to stress about how to make it the correct size. I measured the distance from the lighter patch to the edge and used that as my starting point.

I hope the distances are correct and that it will all line up in the final piece. I suspect it is a wing. Time will tell.