Preparing a Base for Hand Embroidery

Been busy planning a background for the wall art I want to create and which I am calling Gertie's Garden. I made one false start which delayed me as I thought the base should be a patchwork from materials appropriate to the different parts of the garden.  So I cur it out from my pattern and sewed the curved seams together, but when I pinned it up on my wall board I could see the colours were far too strident for what I had in mind.

After a couple of days dwelling on the problem I decided I would paint the background using my Neocolor II soluble crayons in order to achieve a more subtle starting point for my hand embroidered and appliqued garden.

The first stage had already been completed - a pencil sketch of what I wanted the wall hanging to look like.  I had decided on the size as well.  I already knew that a size ratio of 8 to 13 was accepted by many people as being the optimum shape for a rectangular wall hanging whether in portrait or landscape finish.  This means that if you multiply the smaller measurement by 1.625 you get the larger measurement.  As I want my wall hanging to fill a particular space which is quite large I settled on the size of 24" by 39".

Next I coloured in my sketch and then I scanned it into the computer and enlarged it on to A3 sized paper.

In order to get my layout and proportions correct I printed off my A3 image and folded it into the middle and then marked the fold lines with a pencil. These became the sections of my design which I was able to enlarge onto a penciled grid on a larger sheet of paper measuring a little more than the 39" by 24" that I wanted as my finished size.  I used a large piece of artists paper stiff enough to put up with all the drawing and cutting and using as a pattern.

After drawing out the design in this enlarged format I rubbed out the grid leaving just the broad outlines of my garden design showing sky, lawn, gravel, flower border and pond area.  I marked in some of the main characteristics of the design such as trees, plant pots, rockery and pond.  Now I had a paper pattern which I cut out on the main outlines and put to one side.

I selected a piece of nice calico a little larger than my planned finished size and also a piece of wadding to back it.  My calico had been washed and ironed and was bubbling a bit in the middle so I measured a couple of pieces of freezer paper from my roll and ironed the waxy side to the back of the calico.  This to help reduce the bubbling in the middle of the fabric and to give more stability while I am working up the colours of the design with my crayons.

I had some spare bits of calico and wanted to select colours for the basic parts of the background.  Using water sometimes and fabric medium at other times I tried out the soluble crayons and once satisfied I had found the right colour put the crayon to one side.

I searched the internet for more information about fabric (or textile) medium.  It seems that some fabric artists use it with acrylic paints to make the paint suitable for fabric.  Others use it in a proportion of one to one with paint to avoid colour bleed when using with soluble pencils or crayons.  This is the reason I wanted to use it so that where there was a distinct change of colour between two parts of the garden the colours would not mingle e.g. between sky and grass.

So the next stage was to mark out the main outlines of the design in crayon of appropriate colour.  Then I painted along these lines with diluted textile medium ready for the next stage of colouring in.

My fabric background is prepared with a backing of freezer paper, with the design outlined and with the parts of the design separated with a resist of textile medium.

I have ideas forming now for what I want after the background is coloured and have hopes of doing some layering with sheer fabrics, embellishing with appliques and creating the garden over a period of time with hand embroidered and appliqued flowers, trees, pond and more.

The final image shows some dyed tulle, some torn strips of green organza and some pieces of quilting fabric.  this article will continue once I have coloured the back ground and started to embellish the design.