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Thursday, September 12, 2013

The Making of an Opening

Over at Tangled Textiles we are revealing our 'Opens', our most recent challenge. This is how my Open went ......
 After much consideration I decided to go literal with 'Open' as I had often considered cutting into a quilt to reveal an inner quilt. So I started with a piece of paper to see if my idea had any hope. I had been stuck on what my opening would reveal until I was taking apart the beautiful bouquet a friend had brought me, all with flowers and greenery from her garden and yard.

  I laid out the various flowers and greenery. Not finding any fine tuille I settled for a heavier piece of netting but decided it would be too much to add the stitching as I normally would do, so simply used some iron-on to keep it all in place. I was happy with the subtle effect the layer of netting added.
 More testing .... how to keep the opening open .... a few clay buttons should work....
  The outer fabric is one I had bought a few years simply because I liked the fabric. It was so different and looked hand-dyed. I drew the stitching lines around where I would sew and then cut the openings. You need to look closely to see the white chalk lines.
 Sewn and cut below....
 More testing but it didn't pass ..... the fabric would be too limp to give the effect I wanted.

  So I decided to make the opening fabric double sided with batting in between ... an actual quilt, how about that?! Below is the finished piece
  I finally decided not to add a facing or binding but rather I crocheted a cotton yarn trim and stitched it to the edge. It seemed to go with the organic feel I was aiming for



 To see the the other "Open" reveals head over to Tangled Textiles. They'll be posted throughout the day and perhaps into tomorrow?


3 comments:

  1. That is certainly inspired! A clever idea and a very organic and cohesive result. The fabric makes it look like a tree trunk on my end. Good job:)

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  2. I love it and where the journey took you. I especially love the dimensionality of it. Great piece.

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  3. Wow - WoW - WOW! Love everything about this. And thank you so much for sharing the process and your thoughts. Will this be available on your etsy at some point, or others like it?

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