JOLLIETEXTILES

After the heavy rain yesterday the droplets on the iris leaves by our pond looked lovely this morning.  I am pleased with this photo – current colour scheme – but also because I think it’s got potential for some future design work.

I have taken the colours that I used for the drawing of the small white butterfly and made a simple shade card.  I rather like these soft, hazy grey/greens colours, as in the example above, and tried to collect some fabrics in these muted tones, adding some of the creamy, pale yellow.

Using a selection of the fabrics I then put together a background of patches, using some transfer printed sheer to soften the left hand side.  I was also lucky enough to find a shiny cream fabric with a butterfly wing-like texture – it frayed nicely too – so I added that.  Now I have a background that I intend to work on, probably machine drawn butterflies on top with maybe some floral details added as  background.

I rather liked the printed sheer, so very quickly found some pre-painted papers, and using some dried flower material, ironed the transfer papers over the top onto some more sheer fabric so that I had a negative image.  I then put four pieces of printed organza together, overlapping, and bonded them together to hold them until I decide on the next stage.  This is interesting me much more than the first sample as if I layer up some more synthetics it will give me the opportunity to cut away some sections with the soldering iron.  At the moment I’m thinking that I may add some butterflies on top somehow and then machine stitch so I can remove delicate sections of the background.  The photo is rather feint, but then so is the sample – I rather like the ethereal quality of it, so it needs something delicate if I carry on with it.