In recent months, I’ve fallen back on doing work in progress updates. Today, I’m going to show you what’s on the work table in my studio and I’ll teach you how I use fusibles to hold the various layers of my materials together without stitching and explain why I use facings to finish my work.
I’ve finally completed work on Under the Microscope #1, a mini piece which I introduced to you a few weeks back. I finished the edges with one of my favorite finishing techniques which is called facing.
Facings vs Bindings
I prefer using facings to using bindings because unlike bindings, facings don’t interrupt the flow of the image around the edges. The image goes all the way around the edges.
Secondly, if you do your facings right, you can have very nicely squared edges for your finished art piece.
Now that the mini piece is done, it’s serving as my inspiration for the larger piece that I’d planned to create all along. That’s going to be # 2 in the series.
Fusibles Instead of Basting
To start work on this piece, I cut up strips of fusible web and adhered them to both the backing fabric and top fabric. Instead of basting the different layers together whether by hand or by sewing machine, I rather use fusible web for this purpose.
For smaller pieces, I’d go ahead and cut a piece of fusible web the entire size of the piece but for larger pieces like this one which is about 27″ x 38″, I use strips.
Using strips instead saves you from wasting fusible web and it’s fast.
Next, I peel the strips of fusibles to reveal the glue on the fabric. The only downside of using strips is that the backing paper that is peeled off the fusibles are in such small pieces I can’t use it for anything else. (Otherwise, I usually find good uses for the backing paper).
Now, that I have glue on my top and bottom layers, I attach the other layers and fuse (glue) them all together by ironing.
Preparing the Canvas
Since this is a bigger piece, I toyed with the idea of “preparing the canvas” before arranging collage pieces on top of the canvas and doing any creative drawing. I knew I’d be having a lot of negative space in this piece – places where I wouldn’t place any elements. So to ensure that these spaces don’t pose structural problems to me. I decided to do an all over stitching on the almost 1000 square inches of background fabric.
I started with a meandering stitch as you can see on the top left-hand side of this photo. But I wasn’t quite satisfied with the look. So I went with this all over “cell-like” look. This is more like what I have in mind for the final piece. I’m still concerned it might interfere with my final design. But I’m not going to worry about that now.
I’m going to finish up prepping the “canvas” (background) and I’ll bring you some more updates later. Stay tuned.
Warmest Regards,
You may also be interested in these posts in the series:
Part2: Gain Color Confidence Now
Part 3: Line Drawings with Thread
Part 4:
The Customer is Always Right
Have you noticed this new trend of “happiness teams” or “Happiness Engineer” or some other form of “Happiness Somebody” emerging as the replacement for what we used to know as customer service teams?
I started noticing this trend a while back and now it seems to have become a “thing”. In the pursuit of customer happiness, businesses are now transforming their customer service teams to customer happiness teams. Recently, when I receive emails from service companies, it often catches my attention when I see that the signature reads something like “Happiness Team” or Happiness Engineer”. I don’t know how deeply committed businesses are to this customer happiness trend but it’s definitely interesting to see this trend growing.
Customer Happiness is Customer Success
I’ve also noticed a variation of this trend where businesses have customer success teams. I guess the customer comes first is somewhere behind these new trends. It’ll be interesting to see where or what this trend evolves into.
Pursuing Happiness in Art
As I worked on this week’s piece I also thought about happiness, but not in terms of customer happiness teams. I saw smiley faces dancing in this piece that I created. Suddenly, the little circles became eyes and the wider curves became smiles. So I aptly named it “The Pursuit of Happiness” because in the long run, that’s exactly where I want to get to. A happy place where my artwork is all working together the way I want them to and the elements within each piece of work living nicely and harmoniously with each other.
Some of the things I explored in this work were staying consistent with a color theme, using negative space to balance the composition and introducing more types of texture.
Overall, it turns out to be a playful and happy piece. I hope you enjoy it.
Tell me, have you also noticed the “Customer Happiness” trend? What do you think about it? Has it made you feel more positive towards companies that interact with you that way? Can’t wait to discuss this with you in the comments section.
Warmest Regards,
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Funny name – “Bubbly Bubbles”. But there’s what came to me when I looked at this week’s piece. It looked so bubbly, full of energy and excitement. It has that holiday spirit of energy and excitement so I couldn’t help but name it “Bubbly Bubbles”
What do you see when you look at it? I know we all have different interpretations of art and we all react to artwork differently. But this is what I see: energized atoms, excitedly jumping around due to their high energy states. Oh, no, doesn’t that sound like a science class.
This Week’s Goal
Well, I hope you can already tell how much fun I had with this one. My goal for this week was to go back to a color scheme I like but I haven’t been using lately. My secondary goal was to incorporate transparencies in a less deliberate way.
That second goal has been a challenge for me for about a year. I love creating the illusion of transparencies using fabrics and it is one of the reasons I dye my own fabrics. Since dyeing my own allows me to get the gradations I need to create transparencies.
But creating transparencies in a structured and well planned out way comes easy to me as you can see in this piece here and in that piece here. However, doing it randomly without having it appear in specific sections has been eluding me for a while. So although, I tried to incorporate transparencies in “bubbly bubbles”it was without much success.
To be Tried Again Another Day
Yet, I still learned a lot from the thinking process that went into trying to acheive this goal. I figured that if I went back to incorporate the value shading stage into my process, I’ll be more successful. As a result of trying to complete a piece each week, I took that step out of the process to hasten things up. But I’m convinced that’s what I’m missing.
So, although I wasn’t quite successful this time around in creating transparencies the way I want to, I have something to work on the next time I try. Isn’t that what it’s all about – continuous improvement?
What creative skill have you been trying to master, that you find yourself going back to over and over again to improve?
Watch all the Thread Sketching Videos and Learn the Thread Sketching Tips & Techniques.