Monday, January 27, 2014

Putting It Together

 The four pieces of printed photo are now laid out on turquoisey blue cotton, layered over thin cotton batting and a heavy cotton backing, and I have stitched along the flow lines of the photo with grey, turquoise, and lavender thread.

I'm learning lots from this project about how my sewing machines moves - or not - over different thicknesses and textures.

Below is one of four grey linen borders. I layered the same cotton batting beneath. I sewed the first two borders on first, before quilting them by machine. Then I learned something else - do most of the quilting on the borders BEFORE adding them to the central panel!

Only a couple more steps to go!


Friday, January 17, 2014

Transformation Underway

The image above shows the textured stabilizer I made with my edited stream photo printed on top. I make this printing substrate by coating medium to heavy weight stabilizer (a.k.a. interfacing) with either acrylic molding paste (like art-grade spackling compound) or - in this case - fiber paste. I spread on a thin layer with an old credit card. When it dried, I lightly sanded it then painted on thin layers of acrylic paint thinned with matte medium. I mixed some pearl medium into the paints this time for some snowy luminescence.

After the paint dried thoroughly, I ran the stabilizer through my fancy inkjet printer to print my photo, now transformed with contrast, saturation, and hue enhancements with Paint.net - my favorite image editing software (easy, free, on-line, although I send a donation about once year, since I love it!). The image was then trimmed and deconstructed. Ready for for layering and stitching.

Any questions so far? Guess what happens next!

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Now You See It

Earlier this week, I went for walk to see for myself whether the lake near my studio was still frozen after all the ridiculously warm rainy weather. Yes, still solid. But other waters were flowing, including this tiny stream next to the dirt road. The off-balance cruciform shape appealed to me.

You are invited to follow along as I take this plain photograph on a transformation journey!