Saturday 22 November 2014

Tofino Trail - 4 - Progress is not always a straight line

In an effort to use more of my own dyed materials I made a bold move yesterday and stitched and cut out a large fern frond and glued it down.
It wasn't until the next morning, when I looked at the photo of the piece, I decided it was wrong.

 
The solid material jarred. While it was alright for the leaves of the shrubs it was not alright for the fern. As all the other ferns were lacy and tactile, this material frond was too heavy.
 
It had been glued for about 10 hours with permanent fabric glue, but given that a lot of the substrate was not solid, I had only a little trouble in a few places, removing it all.
 
So how to make a bigger frond with the same feel. I puzzled that most of the day, (cooked and canned some pickled mushrooms, packaged and froze some mushroom soup, and quilted most of a small quilt for a customer.) When all my delay tactics had run out, I went back to the studio and dove in.
 
Yesterday, I had tried making a tree frog with the organza. It was too shiny, but I reasoned if I filled most of the surface with stitching that might tame the glossy nature. The fabric itself was too insubstantial to stitch directly so I hooped it, layered with a piece of netting. This worked very well. I was able to stitch it easily,and cut away the excess.
 
When the cutting was finished the new frond had some life, curl and texture and most of all, substantial colour without weight. To keep this feeling I stitched it down the center rib only so the frondlets? were not tight to the surface.
 
I intend to make about 5 for this spot. The second one I changed the netting to black from white and the thread colour to a darker green. Even though the organza was the same colour it looked entirely different.
 

Now this was more in keeping with my original fern. Tomorrow this fern will be finished.
Not much more to do here.
I've rejected the idea of putting in the wooden path. Too distracting. I'm still working on a piece of Fauna.
Frog, Newt, Insect, Mouse?

 

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