Winter Solstice - Final

Nice to finish this just as Spring is nudging Winter aside. 36x20

The Garden - Flower centers

Still pouring rain outside.
It looks like the weather channel was right for a change. We 're on our way to 50+ mm of rain, (mind you that's really only a couple of inches, but in winter with the ground frozen.....). Wish we had had this rain midsummer last.

But my Flowers............ they needed more definition that the addition of their centers should provide.
I'm still just playing with the colours but there are some interesting possibilities.

I had been a little lukewarm with the flowers on the background. When I removed them to audition centers I grouped them.

What a difference.

The feel of the meadow full of mixed flowers may not be the way to go.


And I pulled the background and narrowed the field. I'm still thinking about stems and leaves.

The Garden - the Flowers

I'd been thinking about the flowers since I started this piece. Looking for lots of colour I was leaning towards a mix of different flowers. I played around this afternoon with paper cutouts and glue and cloth.....and decided to go with simple Poppies.

They come in so many colours and varieties.

After I played with construction styles, petals sewn or glued together,

I chose a gathered strip of cloth, a line of running stitched to pull up the fabric and a notched a curved cut on the other side.

It sounds straightforward but as I decided to use a fused fabric to add some dimension, it doesn't draw up as nicely or as easily. Here, smaller is better than bigger.

Looks good.
Now to see what other lovely material is hiding in my stash.

The Garden - the ground

Totally different feel here.
The colour of the flowers, leaves and stems are muted by both overshadowing and age.

The space between the two parts is undecided at this point. I'll see how the flowers develop.
Their number and size will determine the spacing (height) of the whole piece.

The Garden

I'm setting my Signora aside for a bit. I decided NOT to machine quilt the face but to hand stitch it. To do that I need to restock my thread and it will be awhile before I venture out to the store.

IN THE MEANTIME

I had fallen for a Klimt picture.
It played on my weakness for Confetti or Crumb work. I had put those techniques aside for the summer...but

As I watched the snow fall this morning I decided I could use a colour boost and caved.

What's not to love about this glowing work.

 I wanted a large mix so I limited the size of the materials

And the colours dance across the background of this piece already.

Samples

Sometimes the samples I make are for my own use.
Translating cloth art to cloth art is usually only a matter of material choices. Translating from a photo or acrylic/oil paintings, and watercolors usually deals with colour blends or light that is harder to reproduce in cloth.

And sometimes I just want to try a piece before I commit to a grander size.

This little art piece caught my eye.

The brilliant light is straightforward, but the misty background is not. In fact my mind tells me that the scene happens as a result of being 'blinded' by the light. Hard to reproduce that effect. This is part of deciding what to throw away, and what to keep.

After a few trials I did use some organza plus netting to dull the background, but it is no where near the illustration.
And while this piece would have done nicely with 'freezer paper', I'm all out.
Oh well, move on.

This is not finished.

A second cropping may be in order.

I'm undecided whether to add a lot of thread painting to the distant trees and the yellow field
But here is what I've spent a few days playing with.
And I can't decide about the little bush in the foreground. I'm more inclined to add some vines to the wire fence......

We'll see.

Sample 3 - Confetti Art - Final

I didn't sit down to work on this till around 1 PM today.
At 3 it was finished and bound. Very Do-able in a short time.

Let's see now. What's for Sample 5?

Sample 3 - Confetti Art

Confetti is deceptively simple. It goes together in a flash but then it needs almost 5x as much time stitching it down.

I've tried several approaches. When I started, I sprayed my base fabric with Krylon. The fact that I still overlaid it with netting made that redundant and a little sticky. Now I use nothing but netting.

I've made pieces in layers, stitching the background separately. This works very well if the foreground is not more confetti.

But this piece, I've adapted from a copyrighted piece done in tiles, using in my version, only 3+ colours of fabric. I recommend batiks as they have no right side. Nothing is more frustrating (but sometimes necessary) than picking out pieces that fell 'butter side down' and turning them over.

Using a base fabric that is almost the same colour as the foreground hides a lot.
This piece is over sized and the intent is to cut it down. That way there are no empty spots at the sides.

First the 'ground'.
Some of the under-story and tree trunks. ( Batik resists fraying so its great for 'skinny'.)

The main fabric colour and darker accents.

This is finished. That took maybe 1 and 1/5 hrs. and less than a FQ of the fabrics combined.
all that's left to do it pin.

HA!
HA! 
Now THAT'S pinning. Nothing can move.........very far.