Monday, April 7, 2008

Progress Report




Sorry I have been a little late in publishing. I wanted to show you an update on an experimental piece I have been working on. I took a picture of a water lily surrounded by leaves and was thinking to myself "how can I recreate that in fabric and paints."
First I sketched out the design with watercolor crayons and then blended with water. They dried back way too light. So I decided to mix aloe vera gel in with setacolor dyes and paint into the leaves and the water. I loved the look!





My next step was to use colored pencils to recreate the plant life growing underneath and shiva paintstiks to add more shine to the water. I added more detail and depth to the leaves by using ink and colored pencils. Then I added round, flat beads in various shades of brown, green and yellow to create the plants growing around the lily. I hand quilted the leaves to add more dimension and shiva paintstiks in yellow and green metallic to create more shine. The lily was created using moleskin fabric on one side and a simple white cotton on the other. I made two sets larger and two sets smaller. After turning them inside out, they created this puffy, almost realistic looking lily! I just love happy accidents. I am now investigating ideas for the center of the lily. I will post progress on that later.



This is my piece for the going green challenge. We need to create a 4" x 6" postcard from only materials we had on hand. My card is made from fabric scraps from another piece. After trimming the piece to size, I realized that they would make a nice little postcard. The colors were so wonderful. I started laying the fabric strips together until I found a composition I liked. The "brown fencing" is actually from my potato bag. I want to add more thread painting to create tall grasses but alas, my sewing machine decided to stop working. Cleaned it all out, put it back together and now the bobbin casing will not stay where it is supposed to! I will have to borrow a machine to finish or do it by hand. Bummer.

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