Tuesday 22 January 2008

Work in Progress - Wolf Moon




I have started on a new piece of work - from the journal page that I did on the 8th January.
Yesterday I dyed the fabric, today I started laying on sheers and organza fabrics and tacking them down. The finished piece will be slightly bigger than this - approximately 12 ins x 12 ins.

I usually use a scoured felt - prepared for dying as my background fabric for a piece of work. Felt is a wonderful ground fabric when you are doing a lot of Free Machine Embroidery, and building up layers. I use heat fix silk dyes, and acrylic paint to add colour to the background fabric.

TIP - If you are tacking fabrics down before free machine embroidery - use a thread which breaks easily and is a good colour match to the overall picture. When you do dense FME it is impossible to get all the tacking out - especially if like me you work in layers. I tack fabrics down - and then overlay more fabric on top. If you use tacking thread that matches the picture - when you have little ends that refuse to come out - they look meant!

2 comments:

sharon young said...

Hi Karen
This piece is looking amazing already, I love the feeling of depth you've created and there's such a sense of atmosphere I can almost hear him howl. Thanks for the tip too, it's all too easy to forget the basics when you get excited and just want to get to the good bit.
I'm very boring a the moment and am getting quite a buzz from binning my completed 'to do's, it won't last of course!!
Glad you liked the pics, think I'll try and keep it up and maybe take a few different subjects.

Sandra Wyman said...

I'm really glad you're working on this image - it has so much potential and is really evocative and mysterious. Love it!