Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Creamy fabric book page

This is my page for Carol's fabric book. Her theme is "just creamy". I started with a few small hand embroideries on calico, cut them into little patches, stitched these on a thicker cotton fabric, and added pieces of lace... Then, what else could I do?... I decided to dip the whole piece in black tea... The resulting colour was not very exciting. I sponged some very light ochre paint on it. Pfff!... It looked awful... I dipped it again in tea (lichees tea this time). It smelled delicious, but then the fabric became too dark! I was getting nervous, thinking of throwing the piece in the garbage and of starting all over.
The next day, I painted bleach on the piece... Great! The brownish colour disappeared. Only a few little darker patches were visible. I let the piece dry. At that point, I was very tempted to paint it with bright colours, but Carol wanted something white or cream or beige...
I then glued a sheet of tissue paper on my work, scratched the wet paper to let the embroidery show, painted the paper with white acrylic, added a few little pieces of gauze, dabbed some gold paint, and finished the piece with machine stitching... Et voilà!
It's not that bad after all...
Now, I'm looking forward to working on something a bit more straightforward for a few days!

13 comments:

Purple Missus said...

'Its not that bad..' you say!! - I think its fantastic. I love all the processes you went through to get to this stage. Good thinking. As I said on FAF it has a very old romantic look about it. You've done well. Carol will adore it.

Anonymous said...

It turned out super. I like reading though all of the steps you went through. I think I give up to often if something doesn't turn out right from the start. I need to adopt more of your attitude!

Anonymous said...

Stunning result, really!
DH

Leanne Hurren said...

I agree with Vicki - I usually give up and throw something in the bin or drawer. I love the processes - especially the glueing down of tissue paper and then scraping it back. Lovely piece

Angela said...

Wow your page is simply gorgeous Francoise. All of the hard work you put into it certainly was worth it. Stunning!

Beate Knappe said...

fantastic - Stunning result. I love this piece of art

Doreen G said...

Now that's what I call perserverence and it was all worthwhile in the end.
What a stunning piece

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous! Pure genious the way you got it all to come together in the end. It's really a beautiful page.

Micki said...

So glad you kept at it. It turned out so beautiful.

Helen in the UK said...

This is STUNNING! It was well worth you perservering and trying those different techniques to make it work :)

Nellie's Needles said...

What a dialog you've experienced with this piece. Whew! It is AMAZING! I strongly believe that problems can lead to extroidinary results ... an end never, ever even dreamed of.

SeamRippstress said...

Amazing, soothing piece of beauty! Who would have know it came close to the trash bin? It's just beautiful and thanks for sharing your process.

Sophie said...

WOW!! I love it!!!

Thanks for telling us how it came about, and I agree with the others, your perseverence paid off!!

I love that you painted over the lace and embroideries - not something I would have thought of but very effective. I'd love to give something like this a go - would you mind?...