Blog 499
I have to say that I am really enjoying the development of
this piece of work: it’s colourful, it’s joyful, it’s based on my doodles and
so it is very me! I started to build up the surrounding water effect by drawing
the shapes on the master pattern but it wasn’t long before I started to cut free
hand and the remainder of it was done in this way. Fortunately I had plenty of
ready-fused fabrics left over from other projects so nothing slowed down the
progress.
Turtle 1
Turtle 2
As I was cutting shapes, my mind was pondering the next
stage and questioning whether I wanted to continue to build up the picture in
this way? I tried a sample shoreline with some palm trees as a sort of
‘heading’ and then it occurred to me that there needed to be some sort of
border all round to contain the image. I thought about a coral reef which sent
me off on another tack and, after seeing archive pictures of floating plastic
bags and detritus in the oceans, I decided that the border should be made from
plastic. I’ve never worked with plastics before, but I can learn with the help
of all the extensive free information on Google!
Turtle 3
Turtle 4
Detail
As a trial run, my first attempt was with several heat-fused
layers of a black bin liner and I cut the palm trees from that. Then I started
to root in the cupboards and waste bin to see if there were other plastics I
could use. I wanted bright colours but I
had limited supplies so a plastic carrier bag and a freezer bag for peas were
used for my next attempt. I didn’t heat these at all but just placed them onto
wadding and stitched them with a matching thread and a free motion stitch. I
cut out the coral seen above from the red plastic carrier bag. So far so good,
I was pleased with progress!
Plastic carrier bag
Free machining: green
And then it occurred to me that if I am going use plastics
in this project, I needed to press and quilt the applied fabric shapes first before
adding any. I am at the quilting stage now whilst still experimenting with
different plastics and different approaches to producing colours. This is great
fun!!
Preparing for quilting
Quilting detail
Quilting detail 2
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