The weather is definitely getting warmer & it is consequently an exciting time in the garden. Our orange pig face flowers are just on the cusp of opening up. They look so elegant as buds though, that I decided they were a worthy muse for this week's art project.
As I've mentioned before, time is a little stretched these days as I try to balance some study, work for exhibitions, life AND a weekly art project! However, even the few preliminary drawings I did, helped me get a sense of what I wanted to produce & how. One of the things I had to forgo because of technique & size restrictions, was the proportion of the bud. In real life it is more narrow, whereas I needed to make it wider to be able to get more detail in as well as being able to fit my scissors around stitched lines!
My raid on the fabric stash resulted in some fabulous options & I must admit that these happy colours did make the process more enjoyable to proceed with. :-)
What I needed for this piece, were three separate 'sandwich' layers. The first was topped with the lime green (which you can see peeping out above) and stitched through with the outline design for the background pattern. That was a 4 fabric sandwich including the background. The next sandwiched layer was for the orange bud & that also included 4 layers. You will notice that in this case I am sewing in the outline design before putting the next sandwich layer on top. This is quite risky, as it is very easy for the layers to move, so I had to make sure that the top & right hand side of each piece lined up.
Finally the top sandwich was applied & that only had 3 layers of fabric.
At last it was time to get the scissors out & start cutting back.
It was no time at all before I could start carefully cutting back the orange bud.
I was very pleased with it. Now it was time to cut back the background pattern that was inspired by the sharp little criss-crossing succulenty leaves of the pig face plant.
All in all I am quite pleased with this outcome & I am particularly pleased with the colour combination. I like the effectiveness of the black background, which, although not accurate in terms of the garden, it is aestheticly more dramatic & pleasing to the eye! Well....mine anyway!
That's beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThanks Virginia.
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