Chapter 10 - a bit fishy

The fish lines from the top:-

Top - I gathered some dyed sheeting and pulled the gathers variably and stitched to a firm heavy cotton stay to get the fish shapes. The middle fish was then machined on top of the gathers.  This didn't make enough difference to mark it out clearly from the adjoining fish so I stroked markal on top. I like the effect, but would make individual fish and join them, I think to get the variety.

Middle - I joined three different materials to see if this was better and used quilting and cutting around the tail areas.  The orange fish is pretty horrendous, but the definition is good.

Bottom - I took a length of dyed cotton and made corded pintucks with a 4mm needle, changing sides to get the different effects.  Then I pintucked across in the same way. I used different free maching to make the fish look different - but again I think making individual fish and joining would be better.

As the pattern of the fish lines is so pronounced I think there is a case to be made for using all the methods to produce the fish.

 

Thinking about the diamond shapes - I have tried dyed scrunched tissue, it is shown in the previous post where I cut out the diamonds and pushed the tissue in the gaps - this is the back of the big paper design. I tried one background colour, several background colours and the fish prints.  I forgot to take photos of the single and several coloured backgrounds as I rejected them so quickly! 

I am favouring scrumpling the fish prints to appear in the diamond gaps. I think as there can be several reddy orange diamonds I can avoid having a large fish in the contrast colour - little flashes are more effective. They will be sewn to the background material which will be quilted over wadding around the diamond shapes and the the fish lines applied on top, topped off with the net- sampling machine cords, twisted cords for this and the long lines to the monoprint.

I crumpled the monoprint until it was soft and floppy and then quilted to a firm background with polyester wadding.  The scarred and unscarred sea bed areas were free machined using fancy stitches to get small shapes effect without heavy stitching to avoid tearing the paper.  The sediment plume was hand stitched.  Detail has been lost - but maybe because it will be a 'long view' it is not so important.  Think I still prefer the cloth version.

This was printed on fine cotton poplin.  I machined the unscarred sea bed and the sediment plume areas first so they would not be flattened when quilting.  A firm heavy linen backing with thin polyester wadding was then quilted with duller threads in the scarred sea bed areas and the ship areas outlined with black and dark metallic whip stitch.  The areas of sea bed left unscarred were joyfully whip-stitched in appropriate colours with a variegated metallic thread in the bobbin