Thursday, August 28, 2008

Slowly but surely



Yeah, I know that looks like a mysterious mess, but I thought I'd share the beginning stages of a new project. For my design workshop, our next challenge assignment involves the concepts of balance and threadwork. My inspiration piece is a textile design by the Scottish artist Charles Rennie McIntosh, of stylized tulips, and I adapted it and fiddled with it and messed around with it in Photoshop until I got it where I wanted it. Then (putting my new inkjet printer to the test) I printed it out on tracing paper, laid it out on fabric, and sewed over the whole thing.

I tried this sewing-through-tracing paper-technique on a small project, by the way, and it worked fine. Pulling the tracing paper off at the end was no more difficult than removing paper foundations after paper piecing. Although I think I should stock up on some water soluable stabilizer -- it'd be nice to just dampen it and have it melt away. At any rate, this is sort of a fun way to transfer a design and get the quilting done in one swell foop.

So, the threadwork defines the lines of the design and acts as the quilting lines, too. And now, I'm painting in the spaces with Lumiere paints -- a very fun and relaxing process.



It's frustrating, though...after doing the design work and drawing and stitching, which took a fair amount of time, I was so happy to get to the painting part... And I haven't had time to get more than this little corner done.

Once again, real life gets in the way of serious fun.

Oh well, it's there waiting for me.

2 comments :

  1. This looks like a fun project. I love Mackintosh's work -- so much so that I lobbiid heavily to name our daughter Rennie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lovely work - I too use tracing paper through my printer - nto sure if water soluable would work through the printer if only some one could come up with a fine water soluable paper!

    ReplyDelete