I have gone back to my original cut-up picture and taken perhaps the most promising section – the landscape with the reeds and the overhead bird – and decided to work on it with a technique that I have used lots of times before. However, when I have used this in the past (Touch Of Spice workshop) there have been bright ‘patches’ of colour and texture embedded into the background surface in a random manner, here I wanted to make it more realistic and use the landscape shapes.
Firstly I painted a piece of bondaweb, very casually, in the sky and ground colours from my picture and just suggested a few reeds with a few brush strokes. As you can see, the colours are very wishy-washy, particularly as I have then ironed it onto a piece of pale gold synthetic velvet.
Next I snipped up a range of synthetic fabrics – organza, net, sequin glitz – into elongated pieces and arranged them onto the background.
From the photograph I can see that I also snipped up a few metallic threads and tiny scraps – I think I could have done more of this BEFORE I laid on the reeds as I think that would have helped to integrate the surface. After this I laid parchment paper over the top and ironed all over. In the photograph below the fabrics are now embedded into the painted background.
Next, I folded a stiff piece of card in half and used the spine to stamp more reeds into the fabric pieces. In the foreground you can also see the use of a commercial stencil (bamboo) to give a bit more interest but I don’t think I was brave enough with the colour and I might go back to that.
After this I used my soldering iron to suggest a few more reeds and give more definition to the painted ones. I’m not sure this made much difference but it does also help adhere the fabric reeds to the background, particularly the ones that are overlapping.
Finally to decide what to do next as this wasn’t ever meant to be finished – as usual, I’m just playing around. I have bonded the whole thing onto a piece of pelmet vilene as this stops the velvet slipping and is essential if I decide I am going to machine into it. Below you can see how I have laid out the piece on my work table and isolated the section I would like to use, however I probably will work on all of it and then use the L-plates once again to pick out the best section. I think the soaring bird (darker probably) will be essential to the piece if I ever finish it – gives a focus to a quiet landscape – but I have just laid it on at the moment so you can see how it is developing.
JOLLIETEXTILES 