Confetti

Quite some time ago I bought 1/2 yard bundle of a whole spectrum of ombre fabric called Confetti.  The colors are beautiful and rich and I love the little metallic polka dots mixed in with the other tone on tone dots.  

I've been dreaming and scheming for a while now what I would do with it....and just yesterday I started one of the many projects I've been thinking about.

But first...a little bit about the prep. From salvage to salvage the fabric goes from dark and more dense dots to light and more sparse in the middle...then back to dark.  I cut each piece in half giving me two bundles that look like this picture below.  I tucked the second half away for down the road.

Next I sliced these pieces in half again and spent a loooong time fusing the webbing onto the back of each piece. Most fabrics fuse easily...especially hand dyed fabric.  The glue sinks right in under a hot iron and the paper peals right off once it's cool.

But this fabric was TOUGH! Maybe it has extra chemicals because of the metallic dots....but I had to iron and iron before the fusible webbing would stick well enough to pull the paper off.  But I persevered and finally had a nice pile all trimmed up and ready to go.

My first project is a fallish starry night sky with birch trees.  I pulled the fabrics that felt a little more like autumn....and prepped some interesting text fabric for the trees and got to work. 

Although I had a sketch....I found it easier just to work free form in chunks....just winging it. I've never been very good at following a pattern.

After some fiddling and auditioning I decided that the bottom needed to be a little more monochromatic...using all the colors just on the top.  Using a sliver of soap I kept marking and slicing the fabrics until I was happy enough with the design. I ended up eliminating the brown fabric and keeping the yellow just at the top.

Here's where I ended up.  I'm not sure it matches the awesomeness that was in my head....but I'm OK with it. And...it can still evolve.

Next came the stitching.  I varied the width and length of the blanket stitch on my machine and outlined each tree.  It took a while but I got it done and I'll share the finished piece tomorrow. It's growing on me....pardon the pun.