Progress on recycle piece

 I’ve made quite a bit of progress on the recycle piece. I’ve created the Moon, the background trees, and the books. Although the books definitely need some tweaking. As I look at this I see that it will need both machine and hand stitching for a lot of the details. 

You will see that plastics wrinkle and that cannot be avoided. So you must embrace that fact. 

Here’s a photo of one of the pieces with the steam a seam attached to the back of the plastic. This fusible adds “glue” to the plastic so it can be attached to the piece. Plus it makes it stiffer and easier to cut out the pieces. You can’t use a fusible like wonder under because it does not have the stickiness until it is ironed and you can’t iron plastic. So it has to be a fusible like steam a seam.

Here’s also a photo of my progress. Once I tweak the books I will work on the raven details.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

And we’re off…

I’ve decided to get started on my recycle piece. So far I’ve picked the background piece of plastic and have made the Moon. I put fusible on the back of a piece of white see through plastic and attached that to a scrap of Stonehenge fabric. If you look closely you can see some wrinkles in the white plastic. That’s impossible to avoid. I will eventually glue the Moon onto the sky. I think the Moon looks pretty good. Although now that I look at the inspiration photo I’m not sure. Will have to think on this.

This is what I have. The tree is a trial piece to make sure I have a gray that’s darker than the sky piece.

This is the image I’m using to create the piece.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

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The Halloween block of the month has started

 I received the first BOM from Shabby Fabrics. It is a Halloween quilt. The pieces are fused and ironed in place and I have started stitching. Instead of invisible thread I’ve decided to try using InvisaFil thread. I’ve had some for a while, but never used it. I have it in several colors. It is a 100 wt thread so it is very thin and nearly invisible.

Here’s the block. Each block spells out one letter of Halloween. There is some hand stitching to do as well. There’s a spider web to stitch between the top parts of the H.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Getting geared up

 I’m getting ready to start working on my recycle piece. The show is not until April, but I want to get started on it. The theme this year is “on the books.” My idea is to make a raven standing on the top of a stack of books. Some of the books have Poe titles on the spines. I have created my sketch/pattern. The piece will be 14 inches by 14 inches and will be framed.

I’ve pulled the plastic bags that I will use from my bag collection. You can see that I have quite a few different values.

I have cut my piece of Pellon 70 stabilizer. I use that instead of batting.

I have a translucent piece of plastic that I think will work for the moon. I’m debating whether using a scrap piece of Stonehenge fabric behind it is appropriate for a recycle challenge. Here’s what that would look like. I will have to think and experiment with that idea. Or just make some gray features behind the translucent piece.

The next steps will be to pick a background plastic and start cutting pieces. The pieces will need to be glued in place. I actually use Steam a Seam fusible for that. It sticks great to plastic. Of course I don’t use an iron on it!

Thanks for reading.

Chris