Sunday 30 March 2008

playing with a photo

I'm doing two challenges this month. One is to make an abstract representation of a photo, and the other challenge topic is 'fractured'. I tried to combine the two so here's what I've done so far.

The first photo is a waratah flower from the shrub in our back yard.



I played with the photo using the filters in Photoshop Elements and this is what I came up with.



Then I went through all the scrappy bits of hand dyed fabrics to try to find some that would
match. After a few hours of head scratching, I had a selection of scraps that I could live with. I backed them with fusible webbing then cut out the pattern pieces and stuck them to a background of quilter's muslin.



I then 'fractured' it into 12 tiles. Here is where I wish I had thought about the size a bit more. I wanted this to be journal quilt sized, which meant I had to fit the pieces back together with only about 1/8" gap between them. I may as well have left it in one piece! Oh well, you live and learn.



It was then sandwiched together with batting and backing and quilted very simply. I used a red variegated perle cotton and stem stitched between the tiles. Now I'm doing some seed stitching and a few french knots over the top. I hadn't actually planned to do that, but I wanted something to do by hand at night and didn't have anything else prepared.



It's been interesting and I've learned a few things - things to try again, and things not to do again.

4 comments:

Lindi said...

I love doing things like that with photos. The waratah certainly came up very effectively!
I like the end result, too.

Julie said...

Your creativity never ceases to amaze me! Keep up the great work, you inspire me.

BizarreQuilter said...

Ooh, this is sooo clever. How big is the finished piece?

cat in tassie said...

I made it the size of an A4 sheet of paper - small enough not to waste much fabric if I decided to chuck it in the bin LOL.