Above is my 22nd Weekly Mixed Media piece. Below is what the back side looks like.
I have a lot of fringe, as described in an earlier post. Since this was an extremely busy week, I thought I'd use one of them to create this week's piece, because I thought it would be quick, and I wouldn't have too many steps to go through. Well, there were very few steps, but it wasn't quick. In order to get the fringe to show through the fleece, it required a lof time needle punching the fleece over and over and over. Here's how I did it:
Lay 8 pieces of fringe across a 10" square piece of yellow pre-felted wool fleece.
Lay a same size piece of orange pre-felted wool fleece on top of the yellow fleece and fringe.
With the yellow side up, needle punch if from the top down, from the center of the fleece sandwich to the outer edges (as per the photo above). Then, turn the sandwich over, and with the orange side up, needle punch it from the center to the outer edges, on the part that was not felted when doing the yellow side. Changing sides often, go over and over and over the fleece and fringe, so they fringe starts to show through both colors of the fleece.
When you have exposed as much of the fringe as you want to, or can, cut the piece in half, on the center line that divides the different felted sides.
With the top sides of your felt, meet the outer sides meeting in the center, and place a strip of green pre-felted wool fleece under the center. Make sure to pull the extra edges of the fringe to the top, so you can see them. Needle punch them in place, making sure to punch through the fringe and the green strip. Add another strip of green fleece if you think it needs more thickness.
The back side will look similar to this picture.
Using a 6" square template, choose which angle you want the green center to be oriented. Use a pencil to mark the edges, and trim to size.
Choose sewing thread that is as close to the fringe color as possible, and using a sewing machine, stitch lines alone one edge of the fringe, to highlight it.
You can see my 2008 weekly mixed media work (so far) on my website, and read about my process/progress here on my blog.
