Tuesday, May 1, 2012

spiralling into green

This atc was made from a sample of  silk fabric.  I felt the candy wrapper was just right for it, so I sewed that on,  The spiral was made from a cheap broken child's bangle that I bent into shape.  I added the black felt circle just because!  And I used some letter beads to spell out the word, even though I didn't have the right letters (the P and R are made from B letters by using a bit of white out or tippex).

Ahhh, green.  Well our Tangled Textiles Challenge this round is 'green' and the last few days I have been immersed in green
A selection of green, including paper, chiffon, organza, velvet, silk, brocade, fabric paper, foil, plastic faux suede, tyvek, lutradur, felt, silk paper, polar fleece and lots of cottons.....all some shade of green
One of the things I am doing with some of the fabrics, especially the cottons, is stiffening and stabilising them by painting with PVA.  This makes them-
  • stiff and able to be used as dimensional elements
  • able to be free motion embroidered without a hoop ie they are stiff
  • it also makes them stable for cutting shapes, ie the edges won't fray
 I have some tulle and batting and scrim that I will also paint and dye, but above, I painted a piece of cellofoil with Alcohol ink, and it is pretty yummy.  I might also admit that I have a fair bit of green transfer foil.

Probably by now, you are wondering what I am going to do with all this green stuff, and I probably should keep it secret, but I don't think my final piece is really guessable from these fabrics.  They are only stage 2 of my piece and stage one I did a long time ago.

Of course, those who know me well could probably have guessed that green + vicki = leaves, lol.  In fact, any colour will suffice for me to create leaves, however in this particular instance, I needed green ones.
Here are some of the leaves I cut out today with yesterday's stiffened fabric.  I want lots.  And I want them all different!
Sometimes I am asked why I use a sketchbook in my work, and here is a great example.
These sketchbook pages from way back in January came in very handy!