I didn't win the People's Choice award for my challenge pieces but did have great fun taking part.
I did two pieces both inspired by cubism, specifically Girl with Mandoline by Picasso and Still life with Herrings by Georges Braque.
Here's my bag, with a bit more detail in the following photo.
I wanted to recreate a sense of confused perspective and shadowing in the design so used repeated overlapping stencilled shapes made with Markal paintstiks. A blog by Jane actually reminded me of the shadows you can create with layering light coloured oil pastels over dark, so thank you Jane.
I added individual geometric shapes sometimes folded and distorted to confuse the eye, then cabled and couched threads by machine on top. I added a zipped lining and bag feet to make it an art piece but functional too.
The second piece was a felted wrap in the same colour palette and design features.
An inital piece of pale peach felt was prefelted then shapes cut out and replaced with differently coloured shapes. This was nunofelted all over with a piece of white silk organza. Before it was fully felted, sections of the organza were cut away to give a shadowy effect.
At that point I didn't think there was as much depth to the design as I had wanted so.....
once it was fully felted, rinsed and dried, I cut more shapes from the wrap (that was a bit nervewracking the time) and filled these areas with freemachine lace sandwiching the specific areas of wrap between two layers of water soluble fabric, and extending the lace into the bulk of the felt to make create more layers.
The felt was finally backed with a brown satin.
