Midnight Garden - Jacket - Part VIII

Fabric and Artwork

I got the navy silk in the mail yesterday from the Silk Baron. It's a bit darker than the photo and does not have a purple cast to it.

I bought the tulle this morning for the quilting and some fabric for a skirt muslin. In the next fews days I'll get going on quilting the jacket. For this ensemble, I've chosen to quilt 60 degree diamonds with a twin needle. This is sort of a sneak peak at how it will look:

Meanwhile, I haven't started the applique work yet because I felt the artwork wasn't quite right. It was lacking something, and was feeling a bit too repetitious with just the one flower. I added a lily to the the main grouping of flowers. The front and back can be seen below, as they are now. These may change as I actually start the applique process. When I can see the flowers on the fabric and the true spacing, it might yet change again.


Q/A: There are two Q/A today, I don't want these to get lost in the inbox, so I decided it would be best to answer them today.

After seeing the post on the stamps, Vicki wanted to know, "What is embossing?"

It is a method of using rubber stamps to make a image on velvet. You know how velvet can be easily marred by the iron if you're not careful? This is the same thing, except that you're purposely putting images on the velvet by means of a rubber stamp and a hot iron. I will do a detailed post in the future, once I have the velvet.

Isabelle wanted to know, "Do you come up with such techniques by yourself, or do you read about them somewhere, or - both, perhaps?"

Mostly I read about them, do a test sample to see if I like it and then store the idea away until the right project comes along. Over the years, I've tried many things and now have quite a range of embellishment/fabric manipulations to chose from. I like Quilting Arts magazine a lot for surface technique ideas. The main focus of that magazine is art quilts, but there's no reason why a technique couldn't translate into the right wearable art project. I do work on my own techniques from time to time, but haven't posted anything about them. Maybe in the future I will.

Parting Shot: My daughter and her prize. She had the closest guess to the correct number of M&M's in the container, so she won the whole thing at a birthday party she went to today. There are 364 in the container - that means she can have one a day for the next year. Yeah, right.