With all my new found Photoshop Elements skills .... I am doing the second module of the "Photoshop Elements - Essentials 2" online class with the Pixeladies, Deb Cashatt and Kris Sazaki .... I've been playing with ways of creating simplified/abstracted grevillea designs!

This is terrific fun and as you might imagine I now have a stack of design possibilities!!!!

The next questions is how to translate these into fabric!!

My first idea is to try a version of shadow applique ... working from the abstract design to create a base layout made up of geometric shapes and then combining this with a digital image of the flower printed on organza, as an overlay.

I found an interesting piece of fabric with a range of shades of plum and pink .... not a piece that inspired me when I dyed it some time ago but perfect for this experiment and a soft mottled green to use for the background. After fusing the geometric shapes .... some very thin and too small to applique with my usual technique ... I added to overlay of printed organza. This is how it turned out ......

"Grevillea 6"

8" x 16"

Hand dyed and printed fabrics, digital image

After some time contemplating the possibilities, I decided on a mix of hand stitching .... a running stitch and some seed stitches and a simple horizontal machine line to finish. The overlay makes working with thin strips and small shapes very stress free!!!

I like the results of this experiment ..... but there are more ideas to try !!!

What have you been experimenting with lately??

Thanks for dropping by .....CC