This is a step by step account of how the piece was created.
The Base Foundation Fabric
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| The Base Cloth. |
Starting with a small piece of an old cotton sheet, I wet the fabric and wrung out most of the water. With watered down blue screen printing ink that was still a bit lumpy I randomly brushed the colour over the fabric rubbing it in to spread out the lumps and to create a swirly watery pattern.
Next I dripped drops of water here and there to lighten areas and sprinkled salt in in spots to create the watery texture. A really random process of trial and error!
After drying in the sun, I brushed off the salt and placed the fabric between two sheets of newspaper - with the iron on the hottest setting I heat set the ink. After which I rinsed out the fabric with cold water making sure to get rid of all the salt residue and repeated the drying/iron process. I think if you leave any salt on the fabric over time it may break it down and eat it away? So better safe than sorry!
... Making the fish
Back to school or shoal?
Well I never... Schooling and shoaling is a kind of collective animal behaviour by fish. Any group of fish that stay together for social reasons is said to be shoaling, and if the shoal is swimming in the same direction together, it is schooling. (I googled that!)
To get the right shape of the fish I experimented with shapes on my sewing machine - trying out the different programmed embroidery stitches. I think I am one of the very few people who actually try to use all those stitches that come with fancy machines! But then again I do tend to stick to my favorites.
I have an Elna Diva - given to me by my parents for my 21st birthday (all those years ago) and it has been my prized possession ever since. It is the one thing I own that I would run screaming into a burning building to save!
It has hundreds of pre-programmed embroidery stitches along with cartridges/cassettes with even more stitches. Not only that but there are also rotating buttons so that you can turn the stitches sideways, mirror image and horizontally so the possibilities are endless.
I tried out lots of different combinations of stitches and manipulated the shapes trying to form the bodies of the fish - but I found that there was not enough 'movement' and the fish looked a bit flat - facing either right or left - no way to convey random movement - to slightly turn or twist the body to represent the swimming fish darting this way and that.
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| Playing around with stitches. |
So I ended up painting in the general shape of the body with acrylic paint.
Starting with a blue base in (Ultra Marine) I added a stripe of white to the belly and a blob for the eye. On top of the white stripe I used a touch of fluorescent Pink (
Pébéo 371) then a blob of black for the iris.
Next I began to embroider the yellow tails using stitch No.75 manipulating the stitch length and width to create a subtle differences in the fish tails.
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| Programmed Machine Stitches - Elna Diva. |
For the tails of the three bottom fish swimming downwards - I Freehand machine stitched to get the right "sway" of the tails, along with the little baby fish for which the programmed tail stitch was too big.
Sometimes I miss judged the the distance to fish body and so left a little gap between the tail and the body - this I corrected with an orange
Prismacolor pencil.
On the whole I was happy with how the fish turned out but they still looked a bit flat - so I added a yellow halo with a pale lemon coloured pencil along the spines.
Getting to the good stuff!
At this point I attached strips of scrap fabric to the sides to extend the base fabric to fit my embroidery hoop - I prefer to use a large hoop that lets me work on a lot of different areas at a time so I don't have to keep stopping to preposition the hoop, I also find that when using a small hoop the more you move it around the more chance there is to warp the base and it also causes any appliqued bits to fray.
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| Completed Fish. |
I hand painted in the sides of the underwater "valley" and added some sea grass. I always water down acrylic paint when painting on textile pieces to stop it from stiffening and leaving a plasticy finish.
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| Beginning to build the coral reef. |
And from this point I got a bit carried away and forgot to
take progress pics!
The Quilted background
I took a piece of 1inch thick quilting batting and peeled
away a thin layer – that was a bit uneven and lumpy (which is a good thing) and
placed this behind the base fabric. Without a backing fabric as I wanted to
keep it lightweight and also the
finished piece is to be mounted onto a canvas covered frame so nothing would be
left exposed behind after framing anyway.
I basted the batting to the base
fabric with big tacking stitches to keep in place while I quilted the
background.
Following the wavy watery lines and swirly patterns made by
the ink and salt - I freehand machine quilted the background, hinting at the
ripples and trails in the water made by the swimming fish.
Building The Coral Reef
On the bottom left hand side I used long hand sewn stitches
in moss green DMC tapestry thread for dimensional sea grass and used programmed
stitch No.71 adding ‘fern” like stitches to the sides of the valleys.
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| Bottom Left Side. |
Coral Steps
The Coral ‘steps’ on the left were created from oval shapes with side openings through which I poked in a little stuffing and made in to puffs, I then hand stitched a little pleat on the opening side to give a flat sided edge to be stitched to the base and it also helped to make them stick out like steps and hold their shape.
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| Coral Steps - Bottom Left Side. |
Fan Coral
The cream coral with the orange edge (along with the small green edged one on the left side) are circular
pieces of fabric with a satin stitched edge (zig zag stitch with a width 2.5
and length .5) I then stretched the fabric on its bias and around the edges to
pull it out of shape and flute the edges a bit. The circle is then folded just
off the centre to layer the edges and then in quarters etc pulling and
manipulating the folds into a pleasing shape – I then secured the shape with
hand stitches.
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| Bottom Right Side. |
Round Peach coloured Disc Coral
The peach coloured coral on the right hand side is made from a cotton pad the kind used to remove makeup! I covered it with a fine layer of organza fabric in much the same way as for the green puff only a much bigger piece that allowed the cotton pad to remain flat and round. Then with orange thread I machine stitched the centre cross adding shorter spokes emanating from the centre. A few glass beads in orange here and there hand sewn through all the thickness anchored the piece in place to the base.
Bobbly Green Coral
The little green puff is a one layer piece of towelling fabric cut in a circle with a running stitch around the edge – in the centre I placed a small piece of stuffing and then drew up the threads to form a puff or a ball shape and tie off the threads.
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| Glass Beads and french knots. |
Lastly I added glass beads in different sizes and shades of green and gold in clusters along with french knots in tapestry threads, to fill in gaps around the coral.
I make each piece of coral separately and then hand stitch
them to the base – I never use glue as over time the glue breaks down and I don’t
want pieces to fall off or discolour with age. I then take a selection of
corals and place them around in different compositions until I am happy before
securing them to the base. I can then fill in the gaps with other corals, beads
or hand embellishments.
Random Corals and space fillers and Cabbage Corals
The easiest ways to make coral pieces is to randomly machine
stitch (with a tiny stitch) circular, ovals rounded triangles and squares from
two layers of fabric with right sides together, then trim the shapes close to
the stitching – make a small slit in centre of the underside and bag out/ turn
rightside out, then iron the shape flat. I also use this method when making leaves.
You can then either embellish the
edges or just leave them plain.
These random shapes can then be curled into ‘rosebuds’ or into
‘rose flowers’ to form cabbage corals simply by adding petals to the rosebud
shape.
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| Finished -Unframed |
Almost done!- the Mounting and Framing
The final stage was to mount the completed scene on to a
20cm x 20cm purchased canvas and wooden frame.
I removed the extending scrap pieces and tried to iron out the wrinkles a bit manoeuvring around the 2D parts as best I could.
I then centred the piece on
to the frame and starting at the centre of each of the four sides I slightly
stretched the fabric securing each side using a staple gun, radiating outwards
with the staples either side of the first one lightly stretching and smoothing out the
wrinkles as I go. I continued evenly around the edge placing a staple then
placing the next one on the opposite side parallel to the last.
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| Finished! |
The last step was to trim the excess fabric from the back
and sign, name and date canvas behind!
