Friday, March 20, 2015

Water Series Fabric Collage at LowellArts!

Water Series: 4

Detail of Water Series: 4
I worked hard in February producing two fabric collage pieces to continue my goal to work and develop my textiles in a 2-D composition.  Water Series: 1 and 2 were accepted into the Celebration of the Arts (Feb. 6-18 and a previous post).  Water Series: 3 was not accepted at the LowellArts! West Michigan Regional Art Competition, unfortunately (maybe if it had been smaller), but Water Series: 4 is in the show and I got to see it hung last night at the reception.  (Also great news that they'll be moving to a new building on Main Street which will give them lots more room for exhibits and PARKING.)

I worked with a lot discharged cotton, rayon (top black piece), dyed cheese cloth, knits, as well as hand printed fabrics.

I had a great deal of difficulty trying to machine stitch the piece because the opening section of my sewing machine is not as large as I need (and newer models seem to have even smaller openings).  For the first in the series, I backed it with white craft felt; the second one I used Peltex (or TimTex) and the much firmer PelTex/TimTex has a great firmness but it doesn't fold easily to be able to stitch the left side of the piece.  So by the time I got to Water Series: 4, I was back to using craft felt to back the stitching.   

Detail of Water Series: 4

I also backed the other small ones with black foam core (sewed on one side of Velcro to the back of the piece and glued the opposite Velcro side to foam core).  This was great for the smaller somewhat square/rectangular pieces but for #4, which is very long, I didn't think this would work, so I put a foam core piece up at the top under the black section which I put the sleeve and dowel.  I was gratified to see that it hung well and flat to the wall for the exhibition.

Detail of Water Series: 4

No comments:

Post a Comment