Project 10 Stage 2a

In this stage I need to look hard at my Theme Book, review what I've done and make some selections.

My tutor has suggested I take another look at my water melon work from earlier in my Theme Book. As I liked this work it certainly won't be a hardship.

Famous last words!  I took this image:

and I simply couldn't get to grips with it at all.

I used a sheet of green acrylic felt and covered it with organza in two colours of green and this gave me a lovely shiny "skin".  I did something fairly similar with the "flesh" and made some marks with my soldering iron.  I was so dissatisfied that I ended up pulling it all apart.

I've thought a lot about why this work was unsuccessful and I think that once again I have been guilty of copying and not having a vision of where I want to go with my work.  To be a bit more positive about it at least I know it was poor work and can reflect on why it should be so.

I set about making a better job of it.  Back to the drawing board thinking of words to describe what I saw in the watermelon picture.  Shiny, mottled, smooth, succulent, juicy are all very evocative.

I made a selection of fabrics and cottons.

And I even managed to re-use some of what I had prepared in my previous effort.  This time I added much more texture to the pink element.  It took quite some doing to change the red felt into succulent, juicy pink.  I achieved it by layering silk, net and some patterned chiffon.  I laid the green on the pink .

and machined the two together in sections.

The "seeds" are long beads made out of bone that I bought in Africa and they are pretty special.  I added some extra marks with the soldering iron.

Considering how unhappy I'd been previously this came together well in the end.  The photos don't do it justice probably because of the reflections on the organza.

In this I used several techniques I've developed in this course; applique, machine embroidery and fusing.

I took the same image again and melted together some carrier bags of the more flimsy variety.  I got the iron just right and the result was good.  The darker bag was green but the iron darkened it considerably so it looks black.

The shapes were lovely but I was uninspired so I just had a play.  I used the lime green on my machine and decided to try a zig zag free machine to embellish the bags.  Because the work was very floppy I placed it on bright pink acrylic felt.

I tipped my scraps from the previous work onto the plastic bags, covered it with the scrappy organza I'd ripped off  and just had some fun.  It bears little resemblance to the original image but it is exciting and made almost entirely of rubbish.


I went back to my watermelon and played with it on the computer and got the most amazing images.

First I changed the orientation and the colours

I stretched things out a bit and continued with my colour changes and effects (Paint.net):

Effects, Dents, scale 50 the rest default

Effects, Tile reflection at default

Effects, Curvature 20 rest default
Orange has virtually disappeared

I put some orange back

Effects, Dents at default

Over the period I've been playing with this programme I have learnt that bold, contrasting colours seem to work best.  The intensity of the colour diminishes as the effects are progressed.  This is exagerated further if you do a bondaweb print onto fabric.

Instead of vibrant the effect is subdued with a lovely sort of haziness about it.


I tried one or two more colour combinations.

Colour change and Dents 88.15

As above x2

Colour change and Dents 88.15

As above x2

For me this works much better with the green.  It provides some contrast.

Although I could carry on like this all day I'm not sure it's getting me anywhere. I feel as though I'm hiding from what I should be doing.  Unusually for me I feel a bit unmotivated.