I loved the word Strength. I decided to dedicate my work this month to the massive effort I've been making on strengthening my body. I also am keeping in mind my self-challenge of trying a different technique to execute my concept each time in order to try out the many tools I've been collecting over the years. This time I used a fabric collage technique I learned from Susan Carlson. I took a picture of a set of dumbbells on my mat table in my home exercise room (a room I need to visit more often - not sure why it seems easier to drive to the gym :) ). I printed the picture out and traced the dumbbell outlines and light contours with a black marker on tracing paper. I brought it to the copy shop and had it enlarged it 120%. I then traced the enlargement onto muslin. I pinned the muslin on top of paper on a foam core board and sat down in front of it with a pile of brown fabric scraps and Aileene's Tacky glue. I cut and placed pieces of fabric on the muslin, trimming the fabric to my outlines as I went and filling in gaps where needed. When I was done I cut out my dumbbell image and tested it on different fabric backgrounds. I chose a piece of cotton from a sample given to me by my friend who runs a Fine Linen store - it has a flowery pattern woven into it and has lustrous texture. I tacked the image to my background fabric with the tacky glue and covered it with black tulle before quilting it with batting and backing. I quilted the image with a black thin thread from Wonderfil. The background was quilted with a similar thread that matched the background. I chose a leaf motif for the background to coordinate with the flowery design on the background. I used wavy lines below the image in homage to the table the dumbells sat on.
