They are all quite nicely patterned and full of varying colors. Two of the things that tend to draw me to any fabric.
Now the bright idea. Imagine you're standing in a workshop with me and I tell you to just do what I say, and everything will work out. By the way, if that is ever the case, it might be wise to just watch, take notes, and THEN do it with the 'oh, we should have done it this way' situations all taken care of. But, I digress,,,
So, there I was in my sewing room. It was early evening and the caffeine from late afternoon coffee was finally kicking in. Funny how sometimes there seems to be no affect at all, and other times, well, soon you'll see just what can happen.
I decided to put Mistyfuse on the backs and then trimmed off those areas that were beyond the Mistyfuse. I wanted to be sure that each piece I would cut could be positioned and ironed in place. Good idea, but I also should have made all four pieces "identical" in size. You'll see why soon. I laid them on top of each other, aligning two sides, and using the back of my hand for smoothing to make sure I wouldn't start them sticking to each other. I had this idea that if I cut them, with my wavy ruler into strips, I could put the red and gold together into two new pieces, where the colors of stripes would just be alternating. Then I would do the same for the blue and green. That was the plan, but something went awry. After cutting the first strips across the fabrics (all four), I took the red and gold pieces out. In doing this everything started shifting! I hadn't layered them with those two colors on top. One was on top and the other was on the bottom. I wish I would have just left them all the way they were. I finally decided to try to put them all back together on the cutting board. This is where the same dimensions off all pieces would have been helpful. As I would get close to edge pieces, some colors were nonexistent. Oh well, live and learn, so I continued. My next step was to cut wavy strips again, this time going across the first cuts. Now I want to say, I've done something similar in the past and it turned out quite lovely. This time I'm not so sure. I then cut a piece of batiste to use for fusing the design onto. I marked the center lines horizontal and vertical so I could build things out from there. I knew I wanted the colors to rotate, but be random. It took me until the wee hours in the morning to get this figured out. I would put down one shape into each of the quadrants, press and move to the next shape. Oh, I forgot to mention this. When I did the second wavy cuts, all of the fabrics were sticky side up! That meant that each shape came off the board and flipped over before being placed on the batiste! What a goofy thing to do. I am very good at putting puzzles together, but not if all the pieces are upside down and many very similar in size. I did interchange two shapes, eventually I figured that out. With some warming up and gentle persuasion they were removed and put into their proper positions. And how it looks at present,
It actually looks nicer in the picture than in person. This piece has a lot of possibilities. I could cut it into four pieces and have a go at each one with a further technique. Or screen print something over the majority of it. Well, I'm sure you may have some ideas also. Leave a comment or two.
I know now that if I had kept all pieces together until after all cutting, I wouldn't have gotten the cracks of white coming thru as I approached the edges. Also, and this is the biggest takeaway for me. If the fabrics had not had the Mistyfuse on them, I could have done a rotation flipping of the pieces and the wavy lines would have met, I think? I will try this again and the Mistyfuse will go on the batiste. All fabric will be trimmed to exact same size, nothing will be moved until I am done cutting. And I may just do this in either smaller pieces to start with, or larger waves. Basically, bringing it down to fewer puzzle pieces.
Time for some pondering,
Luann
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