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How did I do that? Earth and Turquoise….
Deirdre asked if I used Angelina on the Earth, so I thought I’d share my reply with the rest of you.
The earth: placed tracing paper over the kids’ globe and traced north and south America, the cut fusible-webbed cloth to go on the globe. I have this “thing” about the US and Europe thinking they are the center of the universe. I conceded to having my own continent on the piece, so I could put some turquoise chips in the southwest US (where N. Scott Momaday is from), but placed the south pole at the top.
The clouds: there is a tiny bit of Angelina, but it is mostly wisps of un-dyed silk bombyx (just cleaned, de-gummed silk fibers) into “cloud” formations. I wanted to just quilt over it, but it was too grabby (and my hands too dry and snagged it a lot), so I laid a square of tulle over the whole thing. Stitched free-motion (at the embroidery stage, not the quilting stage), then trimmed away the tulle in the non-cloud areas. There is a tiny bit of angelina in there to give a hint of sparkle, but all Angelina was too much glitz for this piece. Warning…it looks good, but it’s like having cat hair migrating all over your quilt. If I ship this to a show, I’ll have to lint-roller it but good, then place tissue paper over the earth to prevent more migrating fibers.
The hands: I got first Joshua, then Paul to take some pictures of my hands with the digital (I didn’t like the position my thumbs were in with the ones I had Joshua take…and then he got tired of the project). Uploaded them to the computer and traced them, at 100 percent, and at 200 percent. Well, at 100 percent the hands were too small for the piece, and 200 percent were too large (but I like the tracings I did so well they’re gonna become something some day). So, back to 150 percent–Mama Bear always has the best! I traced from the computer onto tracing paper, then used Saral transfer paper underneath the tracing paper to transfer the markings to the cloth. I then hooped and free-motion stitched the hands onto the background as embroidery.
I used three or four colors of orange-y / tan / ochre Superior Threads Highlights Trilobal polyester for the shading on the hands’ embroidery. Initially I planned to do more threadwork, probably in navy–either the Bottom Line or So Fine, a matte poly thread, on the hands when I got to quilting, but ended up just outlining them and leaving them be.
HTH!