Above is my nineteenth Weekly Mixed Media piece this year, and below is the back side of it.
I was inspired by the rain that was caught on this tarp that was protecting light sensitive plants at a local store. The photo below shows a section of the wet fabric, and the photo below that shows a close-up of the water droplets, though it doesn't do it any justice. Use your imagination a little.
I decided this week's theme would be the droplets, or circles, and their relationship to the fabric.
To begin, I cut a piece of fuschia wool felt, and on top of it I placed a piece of white netting that had various sized opaque circles randomly scattered as part of the design.
I cut two circles each, from seven different colors of pre-felted wool fleece, that ranged in size from 1"-2.5".
Using one circle of each color, I placed them under the netting, not worrying if the white opaque circles overlapped them a little, and needle punched them in place from the top down.
Then I placed the rest of the pre-felted fleece circles randomly on top of the netting, not being concerned if some of them were on top of the opaque white circles, and I needle punched them in place from the top down.
The fleece was felted down, but the netting did not. Not to worry.
I turned the piece over and needle punched it from the bottom up, taking my time to punch of the the whole piece many times, slowly. Doing this pushed the wool fibers through the netting on the other side.
The front side looked like this afterward.
Since most of the fibers were pushed through to the front, barely see anything could be seen on the back side.
When I was happy with the front side, I trimmed it to 6" square. Then I couched some grey-ish yarn to the front side, using my sewing machine, and a zig-zag stitch and grey thread. I trimmed the yarn close to the top of the felt, but left about .25" hanging loose that the bottom.
You can see my 2008 weekly mixed media work (so far) on my website, and read about my process/progress here on my blog.
