Tuesday Morning in the Studio

Wait... there are photos below.
Inspired by Gabrielle's "just work, baby" attitude... and Melody's "make lots of small pieces with your scrap batting" play day... and Gerry Chase's class at AQT, I hit the studio without a roadmap but with a plan.

1. grab some of that scrap batting Ihave.
2. open that drawer of already fused pieces, sort some of them out and create a background.
(note: I really should have amended that plan to add: use your camera).

Anyway. I sorted out some red/orange/gray/purple/darkish stuff... arranged it and fused it to batting. I was not impressed. Thankfully no photo.

I grabbed my tjantjing tool and a little paint and tried adding a layer of texture over the whole thing. Still not impressed, I put it aside to simmer for a while and played a bit more with the tool.

I learned something today: you can create your own polka-dots on fabric with this.

Here's a piece I played with (showing both before and after).

To not put too much thought in the process, I simply dotted wherever a dot appeared in the original print. This was fun and something to keep in mind for the future.







After making the polka-dots, I grabbed a small pre-fused piece of batik and continued drawing some of the lines already on it. Then, hearing Gerry Chase's request that we experiment with a simple 9 patch design, I also grabbed a piece of dupioni silk and painted a complimentary pattern on it. Cut them up and arranged them on another scrap. Used the extra 4 squares of silk to make "cornerstones". I like this little piece, but what shall I do with it?



Ha!! A journal cover!! It needs a little tweaking to fit perfectly, but I like this so far. And it means that not only did I use some scrap batting, and some scrap fabric but I (almost) FINISHED SOMETHING.









Now about that first piece that wasn't working. It just needed something to make it more interesting. On a whim, I grabbed some polyester organza with a lace pattern printed on it. Pinned that over the piece, and stitched over patterning. Grabbed the heat gun and melted a bunch of it out so that the fabric below shows through.

Still need to back this, but I like the way it looks now (sorry that the pix is so crappy). Now it's lunchtime... and hopefully the rains stops for a while so I can walk the dogs.