Rhonda Bracey: At Random

So, the abstract inchies were my first experiment in this short Christmas/New Year break.

My next experiment was a small landscape. We actually have hills here (99% of Western Australia is flat!), and they are the most amazing shades of green from about April until October. I had some green fabric… so I created a hilly scene on about a two inch wide piece of interfacing.

The green hills of home

Close-up of The Green Hills of Home

From the hills to the beach… The next fabrics that grabbed my attention in the scrap pile were some gorgeous aqua blues. So two beach scenes later and I was on a roll! Both beach scenes are about 4 inch wide (that’s 10 cm for the metric minded). I wanted to capture the clear blue sky of summer, the shades of blue/green of the water near Busselton, the white foam of the low waves, and the sand. I added some seagulls and some seagull (or human?) footprints. And a sun to one and a bright beach umbrella to the other.

Busselton beach

Busselton beach in summer

Next, was an attempt to use a plastic template I’d drawn in the shape of a slender gum leaf. I had some grey/green batik that was perfect for the leaves, and I backed them with a deep bottle green. I only had a short width and length of interfacing so this became a bookmark. I discovered the joy of working with shiny rayon thread too — metallic thread just has too many issues, so I’m now using it sparingly. But this Madera rayon thread is pretty darned good. It has a shine and it works really well in a satin stitched border.

Gum leaf bookmark

I’d also drawn a large leaf template, so a set of four 4-inch square leaf coasters were next… Each has the same fabric on the back as I used for that coaster’s leaf. And each leaf’s highlight thread (veins, edge) is the same as the thread used in the satin stitched edging. I stuck with various beige, tan, and mushroom thread colours to match the contrast with the leaf.

Leaf coasters

Finally (for now at least), I made a couple of Christmas inchies, which could be used as tree ornaments. The red one is not quite an ‘inchie’ — it’s about 2.5 inches square, and the green one is about 1.5 inchies square. I added some leaf embroidery to both too.

Christmas inchies

And in amongst all this, I thought I might set up an Etsy store to sell these little works of ‘art’. Your thoughts? (NOTE: I’m well aware that there’s very little money in handcrafts — you can never be adequately paid for your time, but covering the costs of materials is a good start!)

See also: I’ve been busy: 3

Just before Xmas I thought I’d use some left over stiff interfacing (the sort that works well for placemats and coasters). I made some Christmas coasters using some of Bobbie’s foundation paper piecing blocks off her ‘In my garden’ CD.

But I still had some of that 2 mm thick  interfacing left — and lots of fabric scraps from other projects that I’ve been keeping for a ‘rainy day’. Well, it’s summer and hot and not raining, but the heat’s enough to keep me indoors, so I decided to experiment with using fusible web to applique random patches onto the interfacing.

My first experiment was some abstract ‘inchies’, which I first saw on the Feathered Fibers blog. I covered the front and back of the interfacing strip in black fabric, then fused on scraps of colour and did some machine applique using various stitches and threads to embellish them (and hold them down). But the back looked really awful, so after I’d finished the thread work, I added another layer of black fabric to cover the back of the stiching, then stitched in the ditch to hold the backing fabric to the front — I was going to cut it so something was needed to hold the little backs to the fronts.

Next, I cut the strip in two lengthways, then cross cut the lengths into pieces between one and three inches. Finally, I satin stitched the edges with black thread.

Voila! A whole heap of little Mondrian-like inchies! Add a flat magnet and they can be fridge magnets, add a brooch pin and they become fabric jewellery, add a metal loop and they become keyrings…

So far, they’re just inchies! (the photos show little bits of the pins used to hold them in place, in case you were wondering what those funny silver bits were!)

Abstract inchies 1

Abstract inchies 2

Then I went further and decided to see if I could make ‘scenes’ using scraps, fusible web, and machine applique… See part 2.