The Grand Reveal!!

Today is the day for revealing our Christmas Challenge 2014 at Higham Piecemakers tonight and you are getting a sneak preview of mine. Actually I have cheated a little and took it into Monday afternoon's meeting so it is not the first reveal, but it sounds good!!

Our challenge was to "Take an artist of your choice and recreate, in any fabric method of your choice, one of their (recognisable) paintings."  We were provided with frames with a mount of 11" x 8" (28 cms x 20 cms).  They had to be mounted either by stringing or taping.

Like most of the group I spent a long time making up my mind which picture to copy but I knew fairly early on that I wanted to do Pablo Picasso. I looked at Guernica but decided it was too complicated and too grey!! In the end I chose this one, The Roaster.

To start with I tie-dyed calico in cold Redbush tea which is my drink of preference to give the right shade and lines as the picture and then traced the picture onto the reverse side.

This is a technique that I have used before for complicated pictures and I call it "Backside Applique". I am not sure of the correct name. With this method you build up the picture with fabric on the front (and facing the right way).
I chose the coloured fabrics I was going to use and placed a square of fabric for the first piece on the front. Then from the back I machined around the shape, then trimmed off the excess fabric. In this instance I used an invisible thread, though I don't always depending on the picture.

The chosen fabrics

The main fabrics are now in place and I then turned to the front and added strips to start building up the highlights. Everything was free machined in place as I enjoy this technique.

Then suddenly at this point disaster struck - I hated it, got bored and wondered if I was doing the right thing and so my 'Roaster' was put on back burner.  I felt I couldn't be bothered to finish it as it wasn't looking right!!!!!

Nearly thrown in the bin!!

Maybe a break was what I needed because 10 days ago I decided that I HAD to finish it, so further embellishments were added to the different colours, lots more free hand machining and once the black was done I suddenly loved 'My Roaster'!

Mine beside the original

I think the ankles are a little heavy, but don't we all have that problem!!

Small mistake I misread the date and it should be 1937, but after mounting I am very pleased with "The Roaster after Picasso".