Adding 3D to Your Work

"I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes Unto the Hills" c. 1999

First let me say that the sky fabric was my inspiration. When I looked at it, I saw dawn. Then I remembered those wonderful flowing spaces of the Southwest. That's how this piece evolved. It's really another example of my previous post--"Sometimes the fabric does all the work"--but this time the tree becomes the focal point and the sky secondary.

Often a tree comes forth in my work and a recent class I had taken helped to create this one. If you could see it up close, you would see that it has some puffiness to it, meaning that it doesn't lie flat on the fabric. In quilting, we call that trapunto.

It's not hard to create a 3D tree, or anything else really, that you might want to create. Take a piece of muslin, lay a piece of batting (not high-loft) over it, then the fabric (right side up) you are using with a design drawn on it. (Or to really cut loose, use your sewing machine needle to sew it free-motion!) Sew around all the design on the design line. Then trim it out your new motif leaving a 1/8" allowance. Place it on your design piece wherever you want it. It might be good to temporarily "baste" it on with some spray adhesive. Then either straight-stitch, or zig-zag stitch it on with matching, or nylon thread. Another option, which I did here, was to use the cording foot of my sewing machine, and stitch down all the edges with a matching yarn.

Lest you think all those branches you see were done this way--no. The biggest thickest branches were done this way, then I used matching thread to free-motion stitch all those little feathery branches you see on the tree, after I had attached the tree to my piece. Please note: when you are sewing on objects and embellishing by machine stitching, it is best to have your background fabric in a machine hoop and maybe even use some tear-away stabilizer. Otherwise your fabric will pull and get wrinkly. Not good. This piece was done mostly out of batiks, which are stiffer, but tear-away stabilizer never hurts. (I use Tear-Easy by Sulky and it is very easy to take off.)

The three shrubs were done using this process as well, but they were just stitched on with nylon thread--no cording on the edges.

You might ask why I did not do the mountains using the 3D effect. Because I wanted them to have that far-away look (remember my earlier post about perspective?), I chose to keep them flat. Any dimension would have brought them closer in. So the lesson there is, if you are doing a landscape, likely any 3D work would need to be toward the front of your picture.

If you study the composition on this piece, you might wonder why there are several things on the left (a tree, 3 shrubs, and a fence in the front), and none on the right side. In asymetrical design, the weight of one side visually equals the other. The right side had a really striking light sky drawing attention, as well as a light sand dune. To keep the greater interest on the tree (which was my design plan), there are more "things" on the left side to hold your interest there. That way, I didn't have two equally-competing focal points.

Finally, the title of this piece came from the 121st Psalm: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."

This piece helps me remember that.