I'm still working on the
“Art of cozy” design which is essentially a mixed media project,
combining stitching, fabric painting, and applique. If you missed it,
you can read the first part and see me do the coloring stage.
Last time I left the
project at the stage of choosing fabrics for applique. And I was even
considering painting spare pieces of fabric with watercolors and then
using it as an applique material. However, after mulling this idea
for a while, I came to the conclusion that watercolors are likely to grow pale, and since my ground fabric is already quite pale and even the
painted window is not as “white” as I would ideally prefer... I
decided that having pale applique will not work for me in these particular circumstances.
Instead, I dug into my
stash of fabrics and chose the most fitting ones (at this stage I was
still not sure about the cup).
By the way, a little tip
that you might find useful. If you don't have any fabric is solid
color that you need, search for a patterned one. If the pattern is
small and not too bright, it can actually work instead of the solid
one. Or, maybe the objects in the pattern will be situated far enough
from each other, that you can use that space in between. That's what I did for the vase piece!
After that, I applied interlining to all my applique pieces. I intentionally cut the
fabric pieces a bit bigger than necessary so that I can easily apply
interfacing and then cut out a shape with all the angles and corners.
Then I cut the shapes out
of copy paper,...
and cut them out of the
fabric. You can see that I could use a smaller piece of fabric for
this one. But in the end, that's still fine, because I actually
almost never use my stash of fabrics. So, I don't really feel sorry. BUT if it's different for you, try to place the shapes closer to each
other to save some material.
Here's what it looked like
with all the applique pieces cut out and placed on the ground fabric.
When attaching an applique
piece, you can use thread of a similar color and make it almost
invisible by working tiny running stitches.
I worked these tiny
running stitches along the whole shape. And ah, I'm so grateful that I
had a fitting skein of thread for each object! I wouldn't want to buy new thread just
for this little experiment :D
These tiny basting
stitches are not all though. To make the objects stand out more, I
used a darker thread of corresponding colors and outlined each one with adding extra details here and there: curtain folds, book pages, coffee.
It worked for the book,
vase and cup (the cup will probably still change a little!)...
But didn't work that well
with the curtain, haha. I suppose because it became a dark on dark
situation. So I actually want to try using a lighter thread on the left curtain. If it looks better then I will rework this one :)
So, apart from finishing
and fixing the current objects, I still have stitching left. Can't
wait to start with it!
I don't have any certain
plans for the embroidery part yet. I think I want the main flowers to be in the yellow-orange
color, I want something warm and sunny in contrast with the moody
colors I used for the applique. I wonder how it will look like!
I hope to show you the
final result in the next post. Look forward to it! :)
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