I had hoped to show you a finished piece today, but I grossly underestimated how long it would take me to braid enough embroidery floss to make the mermaid's hair - not to mention, some of the hand quilting I've done hasn't turned out so well, so I need to re-do it. :SIGH:




But I DID make some rocks. I knew I knew how to do it, and I thought if I pulled out By The Sea from last year, just looking at those rocks would remind me how I did it. That didn't work - I pulled them out, petted them, and thought "how pretty", but couldn't remember how I did them, exactly.



Bu then I found and  read my own instructions on how to make them (gee, I'm glad that this is a process blog!), except, this time, I broadened the colours of roving that I used, and put them on a gray silk background, rather than stablizer and pinned 'em all up.


Since I didn't have very much of that grey scrim left, I inserted into my rocks for more texture instead.

Once I had it all pinned down, I needle felted it.



And when I was done, I had this piece of fabric. It was  sooooooooo SOFT, I just wanted to pet it like a bunny. :)  Alas, I needed to cut it up...



...into rock shapes.

Which I put onto some fabric I wouldn't use for much else (a heavy cotton upholstery fabric sample I was gifted by a friend - said friend gave me banker's box full of such samples and they've come in very handy in a lot of applications.

There's a lot of that stuff in the "America Now" series, for instance. Painting them over covers a multitude of sins!)



But back to this piece, my rocks  needed to be on that background, because I wanted to quilt them before I put them on my painted background.

So, we're getting closer!

I have to finish braiding Ms. Mermaid's hair and fix up my hand quilted elements - and though I've added the washes I talked about last week to take my background from early morning to the night I intended, I think I have to add two more washes of purple and blue (and maybe teal) to the sky to further differentiate it from the cliff.

But, we're in the home stretch now! Finished piece on Wednesday or maybe Friday.

Until then...

I was just being tongue in cheek, but how cool would it be to write a story about a mermaid and illustrate it with quilts?

These are the beads that auditioned for the piece,


And this is the drawing that I started out with.

Also, remember this:



that I did just about a year ago?  I did it AGAIN while I was quilting the background -hence the switch to beading the mermaid.

Only this time, it was a 70/10 rather than a 14/90,  and it was just at the tip; so no hospital visit was necessary - after a short, intense argument I managed to convince BSP to pull it out with a pair of pliers (this time, is was just straight in rather than curved through) and I've had no ill effects. Be careful out there! ;)


See you on Monday with some rocks - and maybe the finished piece!

It was Canada Day yesterday, so I was golfing and generally celebrating being Canadian and forgot it was Monday and that I was supposed to post!


So, the background is done now - as you can see, from when I left you last, I've added foliage and the pond.  This is the background in it's "finished" state (I'll be adding quilted elements to the background and foreground later), but I thought I was already finished earlier.






And this is what it looks like now. I think the background's done, but I may end up adding some washes of blue to make the sky darker - we'll see once I've quilted the background and added some quilted elements.

Anyway - stay tuned... more on Friday! And for my American friends, enjoy your holiday tomorrow!


* and linking up with WIP Wednesday at the Needle and Thread Network.  Go and have a look at what other Canadian fiber bloggers are up to!

I began with a lightweight canvas, to which I first applied a layer of gesso and then let cure for 24 hours, and then I painted the canvas with thinned out white acrylic paint. I had to do three layers - I supposed if I hadn't thinned it out, I wouldn't have needed to do three layers, but when I did the first stroke at full strength, it felt too thick and gloopy.  So I decided three thin layers (like what they used to tell you about nail polish) would be best.

After that had cured for about 48 hours (it really dries much faster but because I was going to be doing a lot of layering of paint over it, I decided I wanted it to be very, very dry.





Then I added in the darker of the blue greens and daubed my paint on over the lighter version.


Added some washes of the light and dark blue/green...


 

Then I took those four paint colours, and darkened them considerably with the addition of black to each, for my rocks.


Using the same process of layering my colours


Using thinned out washes (I didn't mind if they ran onto the fabric below because it was an easy clean up.)



If you'd like to see the inspiration photo (which I didn't have permission to use here) just google "Rust en Verde waterfall at Little Karoo".

Next up - I'm going to be blocking out the pool and the foliage on the cliff tops and at the bottom.

See you on Friday!



Linking up with The Needle and Thread Network for WIP Wednesday -go and see what other Canadian fiber bloggers are up to!

Right from the very beginning?  I hope so, 'cuz you're gonna! ;)

This is for the Mermaid piece and the first thing I needed to do was RESEARCH.  The piece I've been asked to create is for a show about Mermen and Merwomen of Africa, and I knew nothing about them.


I both printed off a lot of information from the internet and read a lot on the internet. Once I had an overview,I had to decide what I wanted to focus on.  Mami Wata of West, Central and Southern Africa?


The Orisha Yemoja of the Yoruba tradition?


Her daugher, the "most beautiful woman in the world" or one of her sisters, each of whom have their own traditions and tales?

Or perhaps a nameless fresh water mermaid that lives in a desert in South Africa?

I'm working this time on lightweight canvas, which has been gessoed, dried for 24 hours and now has white acrylic paint on it which is currently curing.

I've made my decision and am doing preliminary sketching tomorrow night.  I may even start to do some blocking on Tuesday.  Let's see how far I get by Wednesday - see you then?