FISHY WALL HANGING

 

During my recent visit to family in England I spent a couple of days with my daughter Justine and on one of these we had a day out in the Surrey hills at the village of Hascombe.  After a delicious pub lunch we went for a walk to see the bluebells and ended up by St Peter's, the village church.  Being curious we went to have a look inside and what a surprise, we found an exquisitely decorated Victorian church almost completely covered in fabulous wall painting and decorations from the ceiling to the ground.  I was particularly taken with the walls depicting the fish caught by St Peter and decided to make a wall hanging.

 

I started by printing my photo and making some templates for the wave shapes.

Then tracing some fish from an identification book.

 

I gathered an assortment of tulle, organza and chiffon fabrics as well as some fine organdie for the background and started cutting out my shapes.

 

 

You can see here how I layered them up using scraps of bondaweb to hold the pieces together till I was able to do the stitching which I did in invisible thread.

 

I made ten waves altogether and after attaching them to another sheet of bondaweb I cut each one out carefully ready for the next step.

 

Then it was the turn of the fish which I traced onto a piece of organdie and painted with gold and silver fabric paints.

 

Then I stitched the outlines and details in a grey thread and attached the bondaweb to the back before cutting out the shapes.

 

Now for the assembly, first to arrange the waves on the organdie background and stitch all around each piece using the invisible thread followed by the gold outlines which consist of a sparkly yarn held down with a golden yellow machine embroidery thread.

 

Then the fish come into the piece, arranged and ironed on, then stitched in place with invisible thread.

 

I found some brown yarn in my stash and twisted it to double the thickness then using another template for the shape which I drew around to show where to place each piece of the fishing net, I stitched each line, knotting as I went down the piece.

 

The final step was to attach a piece of turquoise fabric to the back with more bondaweb and then cut around the shape. I made a channel along the top for a thin pole and hung it up using some more of the fishing yarn.  It's been a labour of love doing this and has taken me practically all week but I'm pleased with the result.