Saturday, March 30, 2013

A long way from done

There was never any hope that I'd meet the Tea Towel Challenge end date of March 29, given how late I jumped in, but that's not stopping forward progress. Here's where things stand with my "tea-towel-ish" WIP:

First steps: Fused the original panel to some lightweight woven interfacing, trimmed all sides to square up and more closely center the image, and added some framing strips:

That blue-gold print has a lot of metallic detail, and introduces a little bit of contrasting color to balance what will be a mostly orange piece.

Here's the full thing at this stage. It's showing signs of not wanting to be a medallion layout. We'll see how it goes.


The orange fabric beside it is my touch-stone print for a made-fabric border that will range lighter/darker, brighter/duller, redder/yellower, without straying too far in any of those directions. I'd no idea, until a deep rummage through all sizes of scraps was done, how many orange/brown fabrics were in there!

My "made fabric" is all right angles , inspired by the grid-like motif that forms the panel background. Made like so:

1) Cut a heap of strips. These are mostly 1.5" and 1.75" wide:

2) Find strips of similar length and sew into strata:

3) Cross-cut and resew into sections like this:

4) Which get assembled into fabric like this:


5) Which will be re-cut for a pieced border when I get another slab or two like this one made.

I have a plan for that border, but it is subject to change. More pics to come...




8 comments:

Willa said...

Beautiful made fabric! I look forward to seeing the next stage!

Terry said...

Great looking made fabric. Thanks for sharing the process. Food for the soul.

Anonymous said...

Your made fabric sings! I really appreciate that you showed us the steps to making it. The technique is perfect for lots of strips of fabric I have from a project I abondoned a long time ago. Thank you!

sophie said...

This is going to be fabulous!

The Thimblemouse of Country Crossroads said...

Yikes...there was an "end date"? I totally missed that post. LOVE what you've started...my towel is still...just a towel...but it has a dream of growing up to be a quilt one day. Keep on! You're doing great!

Victoria Findlay Wolfe said...

What a neat towel you have! good warm Hawaiian sunset colors! great process post!

Paulette said...

Love your plans for this piece!

Ellie Q said...

I like your more uniform made fabric!