Wednesday, January 9, 2019

A New Year

It is the first interesting date for the year (interesting for me): 9/1/19. Pity I can't write one of the nines the other way around and then it would be reversible. 9/1/1P. Sort of.

Anyway, Happy New Year. I haven't got off to a quick start but it is rather hard to do in summer, when you are recovering from Christmas too.

I have been working on a small machine embroiderey/fabric collage piece. It is based on a photo I took of an acorn sprouting.

I played around with it in Photoshop and then found a filter on the internet that put a Picasso filter onto the image.

I did my latest favourite technique and fabric collaged it without using any product, just the sewing machine, no glues, etc. As usual, the fabric shrank a little and there are some wrinkles but I think I will be able to deal with them.

I traced the image, laid out small pieces of fabric and sewed small areas at a time, just to attach them. Once it was all on, I then worked more heavily on specific areas. As with quilting, I started in the middle and worked on the acorn first. I used straight stitch for that.

I didn't like the dark pieces in the background, so went over them with some tulle and other small pieces of fabric. One of the great advantages of this technique is that you can cover up a lot of your mistakes.

One of my helpful critics said that she thought my stem should be greener, possibly the actual nut too. I returned to the original image and saw that she was correct. Now the final piece is greener.

It is sitting on the wall, waiting for me to decide if it is finished or not. That will take a few days. Then will come the mounting and finishing off, not my favourite part.
I allowed quite a bit of room for the shrinkage, so the ragged edges will be lost as I mount it on foam core and try to make it fit the size required by the current challenge from my group - 12" square.

4 comments:

mycamerandme365 said...

That's come up really well Mary!

Mary said...

Thanks, now I have to mount it - in a little while. I am hurrying to make a small cot quilt for a baby who arrived 5 weeks early!

mycamerandme365 said...

How unreasonable to come so early :-)
I trust that all is well with Mother and babe.

Mary said...

Yes, they are both well, thanks. But he is too small for 0000 size! He looks well and you don't realise how tiny he is. I have even held him and he didn't seem too tiny. But he must be to not have clothes that fit.