Tuesday 15 November 2011

Confetti

I've been meaning to try this for some time, then my artist friend and neighbour started talking to me about alliums one day and how they looked like fireworks and she gave me a photo of one. So this got me thinking...


I started with a square (12") of a pale green batik and spray basted it onto wadding and backing. Then I drew a circle lightly in pencil. I got a handful of scraps out of my purples box,chopped them up with the rotary cutter and spread them out inside the circle. I used lots of different shades, dark and light and bluish and reddish. When chopped up, the colours blended beautifully like paint. I laid a square of organza over the top and pinned in place then freehand stitched around the circle. Then I trimmed off the excess organza about an 1/8" from the edge of the circle. I then FMQd radiating lines in lime green and purple from the centre out and stitched little purple florets along the purple lines. I stencilled gold floret shapes in the 'border' with gold shivastik (I used a stencil I got from a carboot sale - it is actually starfish!), then pebbled in pale green over the top to give some texture. Then I hand stitched a pale green bead in the centre of each FMQd floret and bound in a dark purple batik. I really enjoyed making it and confetti is definitely something I will do more of - if nothing else, it's a good way of using up those scraps too small for anything else! I am teaching a workshop in the Art Centre in Ilminster on Thursday 12th April 2012 and confetti will be the subject - it is such fun!

5 comments:

  1. Oh whooooaaaa. You have the most creative mind I know. This is beautiful. Oh I want to play now. Roll on the weekend so I can try this out.
    Thanks

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  2. Hi Linda - thank you so much, glad to have taken care of your weekend for you! LOL!

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  3. if the alliums in my garden had looked that good, i wouldn't have uprooted them. the color is prefect, too. just beautiful,

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  4. Ah alliums, beautiful flowers, messy leaves. The trick is to plant them amongst other lower growing plants to hide the bases so the stalks and those fantastic pom poms just rise majestically from a sea of green. Whooda thunk it? Garden design advice on a quilting blog! Ah well, dear reader, I have many strings to my bow!

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  5. Kathryn, hoping all is well with you. This is a beautiful project and interesting technique. One more to add to the list of new things to try! I need to remember to save the tiny scraps to make confetti.

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