Garden lady #8 - Part Three

This is a continuation of 2 previous posts about the making of Garden Lady #8.  The next thing that I worked on were the clippers.  I decided to use a silver lame for the blades and a green fabric for the handles.  These needed to have turned edges, since the lame (even though it has interfacing) will fray quite a lot when it gets appliqued to the background.  Here is what the clippers looked like in the hand.

The next thing that I worked on was the dress.  When I pulled out the boxes with my fancy fabrics, tulle, yarn, pieces of fabric and thread, and antique trims, I gasped just a little bit.  I have TOO MUCH STUFF!  It is a collection of things that I've had and have been adding to for years.  I'd like to say that these boxes and bins are all of it.  But......

When I make these garden ladies, I use the master pattern to make templates out of freezer paper.  I'm sure I've shown this to you before, but here goes one more time.  I cut a base fabric in the general color that I want and about 2" larger all the way around.  I then cut medium sized blobs of fabric to get the shading that I'm looking for (light on one side, for example).  The next step is my chop and drop method of adding fabric, trims, yarn, lace, Angelina fibers, thread, wool roving, and whatever else grabs my attention.  When there is enough stuff to mostly cover the original background fabric, I cover it all with a layer of tulle.  I use a couple of methods to stitch it all in place - sometimes I sew long wiggly series of stitches, and sometimes I do a meandering stitch.  Sometimes, I use a stabilizer as a foundation, and in this case I didn't use a stabilizer at all.  In the picture below,  you can see all of the blobs of fabric and stuff that was chopped and dropped.

It gets pressed, then the pattern goes back on top and I top stitch on the seam lines.  The paper comes off and then I trim the edges that will be turned to a generous 1/2" and leave at least an inch on the seams where there will be overlapping.  Then the pieces get pinned onto the master pattern.

I keep making pieces and placing them on the master pattern.  When they're all pinned in place, I start sewing them together with an invisible zig zag stich.

Then I trim the underneath seam allowances to a generous 1/2".

Here is the dress all done and pinned to the background, along with the arms and face.

I hope you still like the progress on this piece.

Garden Lady #8 - Part Two

This is a continuation of Garden Lady #8.  I took the picture of the face into Photoshop, flipped it to the left,  changed it to black and white, and posterized it.  This process helps to get the shadows in the right place.  I traced the face over the colored version and transferred it to clear acetate.  Then I added in the color change lines.  

In previous posts, I described how I make faces using Steam-A-Seam light and tracing paper.  This is the same method I used for this piece.  I learned along the way that doing eyes is better with colored pencil than with fabric, so I used that technique for the eyes this time too.  They are done on white fabric, then placed underneath the rest of the facial features.  

I know that the face looks really odd at this point.  Later, I'll add the fine lines and shadows with both stitching, ink, and colored pencil.  The eyes especially will get a lot of lashes and details added.  I may also add a light interfacing so that the background doesn't show through.  

Next, I worked on the arms and gismos for her to hold.  I still liked the garden clippers, but didn't like the iced tea at all.  I decided to change it for her to be holding something that she clipped.  Staying with my new fall theme, I decided that I would add a vine of fall leaves.  I had my husband take a picture of my hand holding something and used that for the pattern for one of the hands.  Here are the arms and hands without the things that they will be holding.

 

I hope you like it so far!