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I have been very hard at work creating my version of a water lily photo taken by my friend, Linda Lang. I remade the lily at least five times, changing fabrics, colors, adjusting the shading and highlights over and over, even removing fusible on the back when I realized I would have to clean my needle when sewing through several layers of thick and thin fusibles. UGH!
So when I finally had the lily the way I wanted it, fused to the background, and quilted, I saw that it needed to visually pop even more, but felt more layers of fabric or stitching more to shadow and highlight would distract from the smooth look of the petals.
Then I did what I never thought I would. It has always been my ‘thing’ to only enhance pictures with fabric or thread. But I couldn’t restrain myself! My DerWente Inktense Pencils were calling to me, and I used them! I have to say that I was nervous about doing this after I'd done so much work on the lily, so I did make a little quilted sampler with the lily fabrics and tried various pencil colors, even blending two together so I pretty much knew how they’d work and I wouldn't make a mistake on the flower. It also helped me know how much the matte medium intensified the colors. I love the way the color blends into the fabric and the gel medium brightens the pencil color. The gel also makes the color permanent. I understand you may use water or fabric painting medium as well.
I like the results. I may be using them more.......what do you think? Have you tried something similar?
i have spent this whole day trying to get the video on this post. And while I would love to hear from you about this project or a similar one of yours, I just don’t have any more oomph to add a comment box. So please shoot me an email, even just a 👍🏼 for getting this video loaded and sent.