New work & a 30 day challenge

Members of a Facebook art group I belong to have recently been accepting a 100 Day Challenge.  Since my art is somewhat different than their sketching and drawing, and the fact that I've never entered a Challenge before, I opted for a 30 Day Challenge.  I'm working on some of the techniques I learned in a workshop with Jessica Grady on Textileartist.com Stitch Club.

The Challenge started February 16th but I only solved my computer/camera problem recently, so there are no pictures of my early work.  However, I've managed to work every day since. My piece is a stitched fibre collage. Most of the early work was in constructing the various pieces to be collaged onto a base fabric.

Fabric circles had to be cut out, but since both sides would show, the fabric had to be fused to itself before cutting out the circles.  I needed 24 circles, but cut a couple extra in case they might be needed.  Then I cut several smaller circles out of painted tracing paper. and fused those onto a few of the circles, to add a bit of variation.  The circles were then folded and stitched to create tiny blossoms.

Then a couple of different pieces had to be created.  One used the inner liner from a box of Ritz crackers, and the other a piece of small scale bubble wrap.  The bag from the crackers was cut open, and smoothed out flat.  It was then placed over a large piece of baking parchment. I sprinkled small pieces of candy wrapper, scraps of yarn and very small pieces of red paper, folded the second half of the bag over top, followed by the backing parchment and ironed the whole thing with a dry iron.  The bag adhered to itself, trapping the small coloured bits.  This process was repeated using the bubble wrap.  The different wraps gave very different texture, when cooled off.  These will be cut into smaller pieces, either triangles or squares, and stitched down into the center of the background.

Here are the small red flowers stitched in place.  The frame is 14" square, and I hope to frame the finished result at about 12" by 12".  The straight lines are red felt , stitched down with long straight stitches from the edge into the center of the felt, with the stitches about 1/4" apart.  I chose to used Kreink couching silk, in a gold colour, for the stitching.

Next will be some three-dimensional paper pieces that will fill the corners of the shape.  There are a LOT of these, and since the challenge started, I sit and fold them, while watching an hour of news every evening.  Should be finished tomorrow.

Lastly, I plan to create some stacked pieces using a very small "yo-yo" as the base.  They will be topped with a variety of paper pieces, and some smaller cuts from the fused plastic sheets above.

I'll try to keep you informed as things progress.