It's December! The last four weeks of this year's project. So I decided to make them all a bit... seasonal. A bit of a challenge for me, as I'm not mad about Christmas; I'm not about to do Santas and snowmen etc. For a bit of extra "spice", or incentive, each one had to use dissolvable fabric.
Each sample is free of background fabric, but shown against plain fabric or card for the photos.
2018/Week 49, Snowflake
This is a good start, everyone likes a snowflake and they're wintry, not Christmassy, right?!
I drew a design onto Solufleece with a vanishing marker and free machine embroidered it in mostly straight stitch plus a little narrow zigzag. I dissolved and pinned it out very carefully, and it seemed good... until I realised the pure white was marred by turquoise "vanishing" ink! So disappointing. I had to wet and rub it thoroughly, then pin it out all over again. Worth persisting though.
2018/50, Poinsettia
It's hard to remember that these spectacular (garish?!) plants are showing off brightly coloured leaves, not flowers. I wanted to create a simple, stylised version and stick to my rule of using soluble fabric. I didn't fancy just plain red, solid stitching... the solution was to use a sandwich of assorted thread scraps on AquaBond (sticky soluble) as the base.
I free machined the leaf outlines and veins, then cut them out before dissolving. They were assembled on a small disc of felt with hand stitch and finished off with a few chunky French knots in the centre.
Quite pleased, but it's a bit flat - perhaps I should've wired the edges. It measures 10cm across.
2018/51, Christmas Tree
OK, there's no avoiding Christmas this week! A decorated tree on soluble fabric seemed an interesting exercise.
I thought I'd try two or three layers of branches - wired this time!
A few fancy little Indian sequins were stitched in as I went along. And in the free space I had a few goes at little red buckets and stars for the top.
After dissolving I decide two layers worked best, and hand stitched them together. My favourite bucket and star were added too.
2018/52, Christmas Detritus
The main event's over, all that's left is the mess! All that pretty wrapping paper, ribbons, cracker hats etc, crumpled up and forgotten... what can I do with it?
I arranged satsuma netting, scraps of gift wrap, foil from chocolate coins, cracker hats and snaps, ribbon etc. on AquaBond and covered with thin clear dissolvable film. NO glitter mind, even my put-upon Bernina might object to that! Wide zigzag freely worked all over in red and green held it together.
1 comment:
Never fails to amaze me how creative you are in thought and action. I could see tree brooches, snowflake lace, but then might be way too much seasonal. What will 2019 bring?
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