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

Happy New Year everyone .... I hope 2017 is full of creative inspiration and lots of good things!!!

To start the year as I mean to continue ......

I have finished a new piece in the Stepping Stones series. I have been experimenting with new backgrounds for my stepping stones designs. In this piece I have used painted fusible as the background for the open road design .....

'Misty Morning'  © Carolyn Collins 2017   12" x 12" — 'Misty Morning' © Carolyn Collins 2017 12" x 12"

I have painted the fusible with diluted acrylic paint. I have tried to suggest a landscape .. I tried various strengths of paint .... the addition of some water helps to create an interesting patterning on the fusible and gives the end result a painterly quality. I fused the painted surface to a pale green hand dyed fabric. For the next in the series I'm going to try a seascape!

The good news this week is that the Australia Wide Five Exhibition (including my Forest Pansy piece) which is touring Australia will also tour in the US this year to the AQS Quilt Week shows in Grand Rapids, Mi chigan; Fall Paducah, Kentucky and Des Moines, Iowa!!! Congratulations to the OzQuilt Network organisers .... amazing to have our exhibition showcased in the US!!!

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