Nellie"s Needles

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Exquisite Corpse Round 1 "What is a Weed?"

I was the fifth corpse mistress to add to Julie's "What is a Weed?" piece. (note: To see and read about the whole piece click on Julie's name to get to her weblog. To see and read about all the Exquisite Corpses as they are revealed go here.)
Arlee's dangling appendages presented a challenge to work around. I figure they serve to push my flat area more into the background. After all, weeds can hardlty be noticed growing in the hard dirt where nothing else will sprout.
The plants in this piece are actual weeds that I had picked along a rocky bed of a stream in Colorado. They were pounded with a flat river stone into a piece of muslin. That was done several years ago and the natural dyes had faded so I used crayons to give them color. I heat set the crayons to melt the wax and pigment into the fabric. A fusible web was ironed on the back before I cut them out and adhered them to the background fabrics.

The ground fabric is textured from a crayon rubbing over a cut wood surface from the same area. It is over painted with fabric paint. The blue sky is a piece of hand-painted fabric.

A dark green tulle netting is layered over the whole area. A piece of batting provided by Julie is sandwiched between my piece and her background fabric. I machine quilted with black thread to outline as well as to define the weeds. Seed stitching by hand quilts the ground and sky to add a bit of texture.

I had fun! I'm glad that a bottom square was left open for me. The dirt serves as a base or ground for the whole piece ... or at least this bottom corner. I like to think that I would've thought of a different composition if my space to fill had been in the middle of the quilt.

4 comments:

Cathie said...

Nellie - you are so clever - pounding Colorado weeds with river rocks. Excellent idea - I always collect foliage when we go out west and press it in a natural fiber journal. This time (in a few weeks) when we go, I'm going to bring some squares of muslin and press the flowers, etc. in the muslin, in the book. Thanks for the wonderful idea.

jude said...

that is a great on the road method, i was wondering about the fading. i guess there was still enough of the image to work with.

Judy said...

Just love what you've done...and thanks for all of the wonderful ideas!

xo

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your comment on the Fiskarette blog :) I am so glad that you enjoyed the interview with Beate Knappe.
You have a wonderful blog so many beautiful things to see... you are a very talented lady :)