Cynthia St. Charles Store

Friday, November 4, 2011

Fused Background

I have been thinking about this technique for quite a while. I have admired the work of artists who begin by creating a background of fabric pieces fused to the batting. I must admit it was fun cutting and laying out the fabric pieces to create this background.
I pulled hand dyed, hand painted, rust dyed and discharged pieces from my scrap drawer, cutting them to size and placing them on a large piece of Misty Fuse. Then, I covered the whole thing with a Teflon sheet and ironed away until everything was attached.
But now there are a lot of loose edges that will need to be sewed down. I think it would look smashing if they were hand sewn, but yuck, I don't want to do it - would take too long and would be tedious since this piece is so large - currently 24 x 45". I really don't want the hard edge of machine stitching though. I have decided I will do some block printing before doing any stitching. Once it has been stitched - the thread will interfere with the printing process, so I want to get that part done first. Not sure how the printing process will go with all those loose edges!
It does look much better cropped (above). I can imagine it will be much improved by block printing, as well. Stay tuned!

1 comment:

Gale Wrigley said...

Love this! It reminds me of a class I took with carol Taylor last year. The color choices are soooo rich!!! I can't help but wonder what the effect would be if you did the printing after the stitching. Oooooo....ghost prints? Anyway, it's great so far. I'll be looking forward to updates.

Gale, in sunny florida