Fuchsia Floral

Last fall I started a new piece based upon photos I had taken from the garden at Judy's house.

I loved the bright, fuchsia colored tips on the petals and wanted to capture those in fabric.

This piece of fabric I had dyed with the snow/ice dyeing technique last summer was selected for the background.

I started by making a sketch of the design and colored it in with pencils.

I selected some hand dyed fabrics to use for the flowers, leaves and stems. I needed to paint the bright fuchsia , yellow and orange parts of the flowers. The Inktense pencils and a water brush were used. These pencils deliver beautiful color that will spread and blend like watercolor paints. Above is a little testing of the color before it is applied to the flower pieces I drew. 

The pieces are laid out on the background. I realized that I needed to make some changes. The background color was showing through the light, violet fabric of the flowers. So, I needed to adhere another white fabric to the back of these pieces. I also thought the flowers should be reduced in size. Then I thought maybe this wasn't the best orientation of the background fabric.

I turned the fabric upside down. You can see that the former bottom left is now on the bottom right.

  Then I did a lot of thread sketching on the flowers, which was the most fun part of the project. Next I applied the flowers to the background along with some leaves and stems.  

 More thread work to add details to the foreground and background. I decided that the bright green/yellow parts of the background were a little too bright and painted them a little darker green.

 Lastly, I quilted in leaves for texture. 

This is the finished piece, entitled "Fuchsia Floral".