After hemming the calico backing, I drew my idea on it roughly with Inktense blocks. Derwent make them and they are fantastic; you can use them wet or dry, and when painted into fabric with water, the stain is permanent. Using Inktense on fabric is quite a long but informative video from Derwent - worth a look for water soluble crayon and pencil addicts.
The next stage was to sew landscapey stripes and slivvers of velvet onto the painted calico. This took almost a whole week because I had no idea that cotton velvet could fray and crumble so much! Every time I tried to neaten the turned down edges, more matter fell away. Shaking or vacuuming the cotton crumbs accelerated the deterioration. I used lightly applied hand-wrapped-in-sellotape in the end and tried not to worry too much!
Next, my favourite: organza. Doing this piece, I discovered that there are several different kinds of velvet and organza respectively. I've only used polyester organza so far.
Once the sheers were being stitched and scissored, I forgot all about the messy velvet.
Very pleased with this grassy limey green.
After several layers it can be confusing where to cut and what to expose.
Here is the sewing so far. 18"x14". Bit more to do yet.
Great stuff Rowan! you dark horse. (Pat here). inktense are great aren't they? i make lots of my collage papers with them.
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