As I was figuring out the pattern for each layer of the wheel photo, I decided to look for fabrics in my stash. And I was immediately stuck again--most of the fabrics I had in my stash were prints. There were a couple of solid grays, but not many. And these prints sent off flashes of excitement, especially some steam punk style prints with lots of gray.
But then I realized my final photo had a lot of blue and turquoise in it, so I added a few (and found that cool gray lace to the right below, over the red).
This was my final selection of fabrics to work with, shaded light to dark on top of the red background.
And here are the same fabrics with my working photo on top for comparison.
Next was the weeding. Below are my final fabric choices. I put the gray lace over a deep turquoise fabric. Most of the steam punk fabrics that inspired me didn't make the cut. (I added one back in, you can see a bit of it in the top photo--it's grey type with bands of rust, so it looks rust colored.)
And here are the choices with the photo.
And here's my start. The bottom layer. All I can see of it in the photo is a kind of lopsided circle. This one I just fused on.
I think it looks pretty awful, but know it will be covered by the other shapes. (I'm not sure if this is right-side up--before I added layer two, I stopped and stitched an outer border basting line and marked the top of the design.)
I also traced each pattern for each layer (I am making 8 layers) onto freezer paper twice and cut them all out (great do do while watching TV). The next layer will be needle turn applique--I'll press the fabric over the freezer paper to get the shape and make the applique easier to do. The layer after that is the red boxed shape toward the bottom right--I'll cut that from the rust fabric. I'll use the second freezer paper pattern to cut a layer of thin batting to go under it.
Now that I've finally gotten started, each layer is giving me ideas for how to do the next. More progress reports to come.
