Exploring ideas: Part 5 Personal Project Stage 6

This post will detail the final piece of practical work for Exploring Ideas. I had intended to make my work into a wall/window hanging but whilst playing around with the effect of light on my work I have found an opportunity to push a bit further. The picture shows my sample wrapped around a circular glass vase and illuminated from within using an electronic tea light.

My work lit from inside the vase.

It looks very effective and would probably be more so with a small set of LED's that spread the light a little more. I can see that the undergrowth needs to be higher; probably about one third of the way up the vase.

I set about making more tree trunks; dying more fabric, painting my bondaweb and tearing fabric into strips. While I was tearing scrim I thought how much like undergrowth it looked so I tried it out on some white acrylic felt using some left over tree trunks just to see what it looked like.

I tried two methods - in the first one I laid torn scrim fairly randomly at the base of the trees:

Scrim pinned to acrylic felt

The effect was interesting and certainly ethereal but it didn't look as effective as my stitches.
I tried another way. I cut a long strip of scrim, gathered it along the bottom and anchored it down at regular intervals. I slashed and frayed the fabric and got a quite different look but once again I preferred the movement of my stitching.

Gathered and anchored scrim

I then slashed and frayed scrim with left over tree trunk

Although I would dye scrim in grey colours I feel much more inclined to retain my straight stitches because there's texture and movement in them.

I've ordered some more Merino tops so now I'm just waiting. In the meantime I can get some measurements.

My vase is a cylinder with a 32 cm circumference and it is 25.5 cm tall. I plan to allow a 4 cm seam which might seem a lot but I prefer to err on the side of caution. Experience tells me that I will need to start with a piece of felt 32 x 44 cm to allow for shrinkage. I think I will dry felt the seam. The alternative would be to try to put a tree trunk over the edge but I think that might be really awkward when it comes to stitching it. I could of course just make a hand stitched seam. I feel that I don't need to decided now.

The proportions might need to change just a little - I will probably have to use five tree trunks but I will play it by ear when I've made the felt.

When my felt came it was a slightly different colour to my sample - slightly more yellow and my tree trunks are slightly darker.

I followed the same methods as previously so instead of repeating myself this is what happened:

Creating texture with throwsters waste
(against a window)

Creating undergrowth texture with throwsters waste
(against a window)

Creating sky texture with throwsters waste
(against a window)

Testing the felt round the vase

I found that placement of the trunks was vital
- you need to see three

After much deliberation I stitched six trunks onto my felt

I turned under the uneven edge on the bottom but wanted the irregularity at the top. The top was higher than the vase but supported by it. I looked at taking a portion off the bottom but that would mean losing some of the lovely silk undergrowth. Taking the stitches higher spoilt the long thin look of the trees so they remained low.