Red River beginnings

Happy New Year! It has been raining solid for the past two days although I did get a reasonably dry walk in this morning with Rocky. He tried to get me to take him out again this afternoon but I said no.

Lately I have been working on this rather large project. It is approximately 45" X 35". Creating these color wash pieces is enjoyable but haven't made one in a couple of years. I like to leave all the one inch pieces with raw edges so I build it on a piece of fusible interfacing on top of a piece of cotton batting. After I have all the pieces in place I iron it and then can pick the whole thing up and take it to the sewing machine with no pins. Almost no pins, I do stick a few in there because the interfacing is only fusible on one side, so the batting isn't fused. Oh, and take my advice, don't iron this with your cutting mat underneath.

The camera is a good tool to use in viewing the quality of the wash of color. You can see the difference in the above photo, which I deemed was not blended well enough, and the one below, which is what I changed it to.

After I was satisfied with the placement of the colors to the right of the red strip, I cut the piece in half, following the line of the red strip. I ironed it and was able to move it to my design wall, out of the way. Before it was fused I was afraid that Charlie cat would jump up on the table and scatter fabric bits everywhere. He's a good cat, and never did jump up there. It is a high library table, I guess that helped deter him.

In my next post, I will show further development of this piece.
Be well.