HOMETOWN CHALLENGE

 

I belong to a Facebook group called Postcard Fabric Art where we are challenged each month to make a postable work of fabric art using the prompts set by Ann Hillman Lamy.  This summer we had an extra challenge, to depict our hometown in any way we wanted.

 

I  like to work from my own source material if at all possible so I started by browsing through my sketchbooks looking for drawings of my home area here in Perros Guirec and came across plenty. They are all done from life, sitting at the harbour or on a fallen log in the case of the woods overlooking the marina.

 

I had drawn the propeller from our yacht after I cleaned and polished it a few years ago before we sold it.

 

I scanned each sketch, printed them on paper, then printed the script and cut out and assembled the pieces till I was happy with the composition and rescanned the sheet ready for the next step.

I bonded a piece of plain white cotton fabric to some vliesofix (bondaweb) and then printed my scanned image on it.

 

Now the fun begins, I found some pretty sky printed fabric in my stash and ironed on the bonded image before I coloured the background and pictures to match the border with my inktense pencils.

I then wetted the pigments with a fabric medium to bring out the colours as I've found that wetting them with water tends to make them run which doesn't happen with the medium.

I started on the embroidery using mainly running stitches to enhance the pictures, above you can see that I've done the right hand side only.

 

 

 

As I worked I started to realise that there were a few gaps that needed a little something extra and came up with the idea of adding the seagull at the top and a puffin which is the mascot of Perros Guirec. 

 Back to the sketchbook and a search through some photos and I made some more drawings to trace onto the vliesofix, iron onto fabric, cut out and stick to the picture.

 

As you can see they made the picture complete after a bit more embroidery. The border finishes it all off nicely, for that I did a line of running stitches in a blue thread  along the edge of the top layer of fabric and then wove the turquoise yarn through the stitches.  The whole picture measures 21 x 30 centimetres, just the right size to fit in an A4 envelope or frame. 

I hope you've enjoyed seeing my process and maybe have a go yourself!