Lady in a Forest Dress - Part 5

This is a continuation of 4 previous posts about the making of the lady in a forest dress.

I decided to work on the background before adding more components.  My idea was a forest background but not so dark to compete with the dress.  I had a lot of bark and moss fabric left over and had previously made a few forest art pieces.  I pulled fabrics in greens and browns from my stash that were different from the ones that I used for the dress and bodice.

I drew rough lines on the freezer paper pattern to mimic light coming through the forest and gradually getting darker around the edges.  This isn't what it will look like when its finished, but it gave me a sense of where I wanted the light and dark to fall. 

I cut out the figure and then match marked the seam lines.  The first section was the lightest of the greens.  I just ironed down the pattern, traced around it and turned the edges under.  I did the same thing for the next section of green.  It was glued to the first layer at the seam lines, then it's outer edges were pressed under. (I didn't use the light green for the bottom of the dress, which will get covered up.  Later, I will add some muslin there.

I cut out the pattern pieces for the next section and ironed them to the fabric.

After cutting a generous seam allowance, I placed them next to the green portions and glued the edges together at the seam lines.

The piece was starting to get a little floppy, so I stopped at that point and zig-zagged the edges together with invisible thread.  I also added an old ice dyed piece at the bottom.  Then I started adding trees.

I pulled off the lady and her dress, covered the background with light gray organza and stitched it down.  Then, I added more trees and bark cloth to mimic trees that were closer.  Here is what the background looks like with those trees fused in place.

Stay tuned for the next step and I hope you like it so far!

Lady in a Forest Dress - Part 4

This is a continuation of 3 previous posts about the making of the lady in a forest dress.

Here is the wall of components and ideas.  It's a lot!

Next, I turned to making the face and head.  I posterized the photo and traced it onto the clear vinyl sheet.  The fabrics that I picked were medium skin toned.  I thought about making the face in purple, but decided not to do it that way.

And here is the face with the fabric and some pencil work, but not the fine lines.

I had to decide what to do for the background and headdress feature next.  Stay tuned!

Lady in a Forest Dress - Part Three

This is a continuation of 2 previous posts about the making of the Lady in a Forest Dress.

The moss that I made in the previous post was too dark for the lighter side of the dress, so I made some with lighter components.  It was made with the same layering technique, topped with Solvy, stitched in a fairly tight grid, then soaked and dried.

The bodice was then worked on.  I made a base layer of brown fabric with stabilizer on the back and turned the edges after doing a bit of stitching.

then, I made some patterns of bark pieces and cut out some of the bark fabric.

I pinned those pieces into place and inserted some pieces of the moss.

Then, I lightly glued the bark in place with just a dab of glue in the center, then stitched them in place with beads in brown and dark green, using beading thread.  I was pretty happy with the way the bodice turned out.

I think its turning out to look like a lady from the forest so far!

Lady in a Forest Dress - Part Two

This is a continuation of a previous post about the making of a lady in a Forest Dress.

I worked on the moss and greenery components.  For the moss, I layered snippets of fabric, yarn, wool roving, thread and trimmings on top of tulle.  This was topped with Solvy and sewn in a grid of green thread.  When it was complete, I soaked it in water and let it dry overnight.  In the picture below, you can see that it is airy and somewhat transparent.  It will get cut and placed on top of other components, perhaps even solid green.

Some of the tiny components fall apart as it gets handled, but that's OK.  I like the 3-D effect of the "moss".

The next components that I worked on were the 3 tiers for the lower part of the dress.  I layered some of the same items on these too, but they started with a layer of fabric, fabric blobs, and then all of the snippets of fabric, yarn, wool roving, and trimmings.  These layers also got thread, some shiny doo-dads, and were topped off with tulle.   I made sure to work from light to medium to dark in each of the 3 layers.  When they were done being quilted, the edges were turned under and glued in place.

I made the sleeves and pinned them in place.  The sleeves and dress layers were all stabilized with a lightweight stabilizer.  I plan to insert some branch-like things as well as the moss before it all gets sewn to the background.

I also found a face on the internet that I posterized in grayscale.  You can see that it is pinned in place on the pattern.

I hope you like it so far!

Lady in a Forest Dress

I contemplated a fiber art piece to go along with the theme, "Bark, Branch, and Bloom" for quite a few months.  I flipped through all of my pictures that were taken on hikes of moss and trees and wild flowers.  I looked at all of the thousands of pictures I've taken of the flowers and foliage in my yard and on my walks.  And even though I had tons of inspiration,  I just kept hitting a brick wall.

Something that usually causes me to pause like this is, "Do I want to make something to meet a challenge that I don't want when it's done?"  Like many of you, I've made things that I think are hideous or just plain unappealing.  Some of those have made it to the free table to give away; some have been donated to charity, and some, quite frankly, have ended up in the garbage.  I don't hang onto unfinished projects... and stinkers certainly don't warrant a spot in the bins with my collection of quilts.   What I finally realized with this challenge is that it HAD to fit into one of the series that I've made in order for me to get jazzed about it.  

I finally landed on making a lady in a dress that would look like it came out of the forest.  What better series to add to than the one I had so much fun making!  I enlisted the help of one of my granddaughters to draw something up, then looked through some of the Pinterest pictures and some of my own.  Here are some of the ideas, as they've been pinned to my design wall.

 Once I had this idea, I started making the bark and branch fabric.  I started both of these with cotton fabric, added crinkled up tissue paper with diluted glue, and added color with both acrylic paints, fabric paints, Inktense sticks and Neocolor crayons.  Here are pictures of the two pieces that I made while they were still wet.

The next things that I made were the "moss" and "greenery".  Stay tuned for the next post about those components.

I hope you like it so far!

Green Scrap Quilt with skinny brown lines - "Skinny It Up"

This is a continuation of a previous post about the making of the 3rd green scrap quilt; this one with the skinny brown lines.

I quilted this one on my sit-down longarm machine with lime green thread.  I decided to echo the brown lines with quilting that was spaced 3/4" apart and 2-1/4" apart and add some bubbles in the large spaces.  It was a bit of a bugger to quilt since I had to stitch on the diagonal using a ruler to get the spacing.  Unlike a regular longarm, I was able to maneuver the quilt like you would on a sewing machine.  And that's the difficult part, because at times the entire quilt was in my lap.   

After I quilted it, I cut the edges a little more curvy than they ended up to make it more off-kilter.  I added 1/8" grosgrain ribbon to the edges to give it some stability, and then faced it.  

I'm not sure how you would measure it, but loosely, it is 42" W x44" H.  I called it, "Skinny It Up".

I hope you like it!

Quilt Basting Spray

Most of you probably know that JoAnn's has closed and that Michaels has taken over the fabric lines.  Some of the thigs that I liked about JoAnn's were the coupons for the basics that I needed.  Their coupons were valid at other stores too!  I could find large rolls of batting, quilt basting spray, cutting mats, etc.

The other day, I ran out of my 505 Quilt Basting Spray and headed over the Michael's.  They didn't carry that brand, but they had their alternate.  It's called "Spray & Bond" Basting Adhesive.  So, I bought their brand.

It's not the same at all!  I spray basted two quilts with it and it didn't hold they layers secure through the quilting process.  The first quilt was the hand quilted big stitch green scrap quilt.  I ended up with huge tucks in the back and mushy areas in the top as well.  I attributed it to my poor quilting preparation and efforts.  The second quilt was the "Skinny It Up: green scrap quilt.  I also ended up with tucks in the backing and too much movement between the layers during quilting.  It finally donned on my that my usual basting with 505 basting spray/safety pins never failed.  And that these recent failures were primarily due to the off brand of quilt basting spray.  

Well, you know what I did!  I tossed the off brand into the garbage can and headed over to my local Quilt Store, and bought 2 cans of my favorite quilt basting spray.  I should just keep going to my local Quilt Store for my quilting needs!  

I hope you have success using whatever metho you use for basting.