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Monday, May 30, 2016

Sewing Again!

Since my last post, I actually started two new sewing projects, one of which is completely finished!  We have a window seat in the lower level of the house which looks out on the deck, backyard, and lake.  We've never bothered to get a cushion for it, but recently my daughter suggested it.  I remembered that I bought that cool burlap print last spring, and I loved the way it looked with the pale green and yellow walls we have downstairs, so I decided to use that for a seat cover.  I measured everything out and took a trip to JoAnn's Fabrics for all the supplies.   Even with my coupons, it was a bit pricey (that cushion foam is expensive!) but I like the finished look.  So do the cats! (and the girls, who can now sit there and look out the window and daydream, or watch the birds).  It's a cozy spot, especially in the morning when the sun comes through.

While I was at JoAnn's, I also picked up these fabrics, below.  Even though our Fiber Fall chains were exhibited at the NSQG show in early May, we have the opportunity to exhibit these three or four other places in the next year, so I thought it would be worth completing all the elements.  The last chain would be "fire," hence the shiny orange, red, and yellow choices.

I decided to make a new fabric out of these three, and to use the burnt orange sheer with the sequins as the outside portions of a sandwich.  Inside the sandwich, I layered wavy strips of the other two fabrics, plus a sheer red paper-like material that was wrapped around my Valentine's Day flowers.  I used a fusible webbing between the layers to hold everything together, pressed it, and then stitched with black thread in wavy lines.  Here's what the fabric looks like now:

And here's a close-up:
Certainly looks like fire, right?  And it's still pretty sheer, to suggest flames even more.  I still want to do some more stitching with orange thread.  Then I plan to cut it up into asymmetric triangles to resemble flames.  I'm hoping it will have a real flame-like effect with all the triangles strung and spinning as they hang.  I hope I can have some of the triangles cut up and strung by our next FANE meeting this Thursday evening.

Our next FANE challenge (due in August) is to create a flat fiber art building that is 12-18" wide and 36" tall or taller.  The roofline can be whatever shape we choose to give our building character.  I already have an idea of what I'd like to create so I've started collecting materials.  Here they are, below:

Can you tell what these are and guess what type of building I want to make?  I hope I can pull it off....
Stay tuned to find out!

1 comment:

Norma Schlager said...

Your fire material is looking very good indeed and your fabric choices are perfect. I love what you can find in that "prom dress" section of Joanne's. I look forward to seeing the finished Fiber Fall.

I'm thinking that your building will be a library. Good luck, I haven't started mine yet.