My inspiration was a birthday party given for me by my best friend when I was 15 which meant a lot to me, thus the girly color scheme. I also tried to evoke the feelings I had when I entered the room and everyone unexpectedly and suddenly appeared and shouted surprise, so I wanted to make things pop!!!! I imagined an explosion of color and confetti and sparkles raining down around the word in the air of the room and tried to create that with my piece. I think that I accomplished that goal.
I did not take process pictures this time - so I will explain what I did.
I wanted to print the word surprise on a background piece but I wanted the letters to be scattered. Sooo... I printed the letters on paper and then using a light box, I traced the outline onto the background fabric. I wasn't sure how this would look, but I used setacolor paint to fill in the outline in a stencil like fashion. It came out pretty well so I then backed this fabric with fusible and cut out the letters, then fused to another piece of the background fabric in a scattered pattern. I then picked pinks and purples and applied fusible to them. I cut triangles of different sizes and shapes randomly and worked with them until I had an arrangement that appeared to pop. I fused these and used decorative stitching to embellish the edges. Next I cut confetti and streamers from the leftover fusing backed fabric and added them. When all of the pieces were fused, I sandwiched and machine quilted, finished the edges and squared it up. The finishing touches are metallic pieces and crystals which I glued on to add touches of sparkle. And voila, we have SURPRISE.
I have to admit that I made THREE pieces for this! After seeing them all together, I decided I liked the first one I made the best afterall.
If you scroll back in the blog postings, you may notice that I've posted twice. I wrote my post yesterday and saved it, but I didn't realize when I published it this morning it would still be dated 11/14. So I republished it for today's date. Sorry for the duplicate.
