This is the front (above) and back (below) of my fourteenth Weekly Mixed Media piece this year. I don't usually like the back sides of these felted pieces very much, but this week I do. It's very subtle but nice. And as for the front side, I really like it a lot!
I was inspired by the construction picture below, that my mother-in-law took on a recent trip to England. I didn't want to copy it exactly. Also, because I only had a sheer purple silk organza, I couldn't use blue piece even if I wanted it to, unless I wanted to go fabric shopping, which is the last thing I need to do.
Each month I create one 12 x 12 x 12 mixed media piece, and I am thinking about using this photo for my April piece, for a bigger and different (painted and stitched) way, to use this image.
I started with a piece of beige wool felt fabric, and a piece of off-white pre-felted wool. First I needle punched them together from the off-white side down, and then I flipped it over and needle punched it from the beige side down.
Next I placed five strips of a grid-like patterned netting parallel to each other, on the beige/off-white needle punched wool, with the off-white side face up.
No matter how straight you place the netting strips, they will shrink up, and bend, as you needle punch them in place.
Lay six pieces of orange yarn from top to bottom, on top of the netting that is already attached. Needle punch the yarn in place.
Place a piece of purple silk organza on top of the whole area, covering four of the five netting rows. Needle punch it in place, over the off-white sections only, leaving the fabric over the black netting loose. After the purple organza is attached to the off-white sections, carefully cut a few slits in the purple silk organza randomly at the top of each of the black netting sections.
Pulling the slit sections of the purple silk organza down, to expose some of the black netting, needle punch the organza to the black netting so that there are some areas of the netting showing and the rest of the netting is covered with the organza. As you needle punch, the organza will expose the orange yarn, by pushing it out of the way.
Measure and cut to 6" square, and using a sewing machine, stitch black thread along the edges of the orange yard, to highlight it even more.
You can see my 2008 weekly mixed media work (so far) on my website, and read about my process/progress here on my blog.
