Palms, Surfboards, Waterline

 

I am nearly finished with my "Slice of the OC" piece. On this post I show some of the foreground work. The raw edge between the sand and water fabric needed "something" because it looked a little too unfinished with just a straight stitch. I placed a thin piece of rick rack along this edge to finish the water line.

I also thought the sandy foreground was a pale and boring. Clearly I needed something in front of the buildings. What says beach front in Orange County more than palms and surfboards? I made these by fusing two pieces of fabric together, wrong side to wrong side. This gives the piece a little more thickness. When you have two fused fabrics you can leave the edges raw and attach the piece with a few stitches down the middle, or just beads. It stands off the fabric a bit and gives more depth. I learned this in a class with Mary Stori years ago and have used it since for these type of applications.

Above and below you see photos of both the palms and surfboards stitched down with zig zag or straight stitches. They fill up the foreground and cover some of the bland look at the front of the buildings.  I also added some little pieces of lime green rick rack to finish it off.