Coral Sea

Picked up some shells and rocks during my four week road trip of the South Island. This week I am continuing to try and stretch my creative abilities and use these “found” objects in my work.

On calico to create “sand”, I frottage with Shiva paint stiks in copper, gold and white to give texture like sand to the calico. When dry, freehand cut the calico with the rotary cutter and ironed under the top curved edge a là Karen Eckmeier. A scrap gold organza ribbon squeezed into the frottage calico adds a little shine. Maybe I should have done one darker copper and put it closer to the water.
Quilted the “sand” with gold metallic thread to a turquoise background. Laid a purple/green fuzzy yarn onto the background and twirled this into fronds. Blue and silver yarn was laid out randomly and intertwined with the fuzzy yarn. It looked like coral and seaweed to me.

Using Press ‘n’ Seal to secure the yarn to the fabric, and machine button hole stitch to couch the yarns into place. I stabilised the fabric with tearaway.

Sewing over the Press ‘n’ Seal was surprisingly easy. The most difficult part was removing the plastic afterwards, tweezers helped in the small tricky bits.

Some dark green and blue fabric scraps were then ripped into small strips and twirled and twisted to give a seaweed look.
I hand sewed these down, using seed beads in strategic places.
Felt the water need current, sot used variegated crochet thread, and running stitch to give the impression of the water moving.
Fish, where are the fish? Metallic lycra scraps cut into right facing and left facing miniature fish. Stuck these down with glue stick to secure. When dry, a small yellow bead secured the “eye”.

Poked holes in the shells picked up a Anakiwi, Marlborough, and Rabbit Island, Nelson. Positioned these shells amongst the seaweed and fish. Invisible thread to secure. Welbond was used to secure small stones and pebbles, and then invisible thread to secure.
Machine quilted the top, just to add current and movement.

Nelson

This week I( want to try and stretch my creative abilities and use some “found” objects picked up during my four week road trip of the South Island.
Using some pink knit fabric, I quilted in a random “swirl pattern between the slashed sections. This raised the slashes.

Wove some pink varigated novelty yarn through the slashes. Wove 3, but decided 4 looked better.

Secured 3 kowhai pods, by couching between the pod nodules with bright pink thread. Used some other seeds I picked up, they remind me of butterflies. These were secured with Weldbond, and when dry, a few winds of metallic thread around the middle, to catch the light.

I enjoyed the simplicity of this project.

Triangles

Still fascinated with Libby Lehman “Thread play” so I am going to try out her “pot luck” appliqué, or 2 or more layered appliqué.
Triangles were drawn onto freezer paper, and arranged onto the leftover pieced background. I have decided to put in black, dark blue, turquoise and red triangles.
The dark blue fabric was pinned behind the background fabric. After sewing small straight stitches around the freezer paper triangle, removed the freezer paper, and then cut the top fabric away, to reveal the blue triangle underneath. I repeated this process with the other triangles, cutting away to reveal the new colour beneath.
Time for some fun. Free motion zigzag around each triangle like rays of the sun. I used contrasting threads to give a feel for a colour study. Metallic and rayon threads on to were used to add another dimension.
An orange transparent triangle was created with free motion stitching, with stabiliser on the back.

I tried to create a twin need right angled line zigzagging through the centre, but I cannot turn the corners well, so it is not as sharp as what I would like.

Changed the thread to flouro pink and cerise and made pink “bullets” around the triangles, and some randomly overlapping the triangles.
I also tried to quilt using a geometric meander, but it was difficult for me to get sharp corners.