Shadows and Outlines

In my last post I talked about getting ready for thread painting. I'm going to give a couple more bits of information about this in this post.

First - did you notice the dark blue shadows under the rooster? How about the dark blue outlining around parts of the rooster?

The outlining is a technique that Pam used on her Wolf and she wanted us to use it on our images. I think it was absolutely necessary here in the areas where the rooster colors were close in value to the background fabrics. It made those areas stand out where they otherwise would have disappeared. The blue fabric had fusible on the back of it and it was cut in thin sections in the shape of the rooster outline. It was slipped behind the cotton inked fabric before the rooster was fused to the background.

The shadow pieces were added by me to "ground" the rooster. I didn't want it just floating in space. After the shadows and outlines were added, the top, batting, and backing fabric were sandwiched and pin basted.

I think the outlining technique is a good one and well worth remembering for other fiber art pieces.

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Rooster Background

Completed Rooster

The background for the Rooster was made using Cherry Wood fabrics. If you aren't familiar with them, they are made of cotton but have a suede like appearance. They aren't sold locally. I have to buy them at Road to California, or order them on-line.  I took the lead from on the background design from Pam's Wolf piece.

After the background was pieced it was time to get ready to thread paint. The first step is to take a piece of white cotton fabric, trace your design on it and then paint it with Tsukeniko inks. The white background fabric is spritzed with water so that the inks spread out in a watercolor fashion. The idea is just to put the colors you want to thread paint in the places on the design. The colors act as a guide for stitching, and help to fill in an area that isn't completely covered with thread.

After the ink dries you put fusible on the back of the painted fabric, cut out the image and fuse it to your background fabric. You can see this step below:

painted image

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