One Year from Sketch to Completed Project

by Kathy Garvey

I finally finished a project idea today and in logging it, I discovered it was exactly a year from yesterday that I sketched it up. On March 21 of 2018, I was visiting Burke, VA and gathered some wonderful leaves. The idea for a wall hanging using one of the leaf shapes came to me that day. I was going to draw it up in Illustrator when I got home and print it to linen cotton canvas at Spoonflower.

The original sketch in my sketchbook.

But then, as an experiment, I decided to try to paint it on rice paper instead...and mount it on fabric. I got started in April but couldn't find the heavy duty rice paper I wanted to use and was disappointed in the weight of the one I opted for, so I put it aside. Recently, I decided to revisit this project. If it worked, I wanted to figure out how to do it, what order to do it in, and take all my supplies with me to an upcoming retreat in Kentucky where I knew I would find many more beautifully shaped leaves.

It wasn't quite as easy to do as printing to Spoonflower. After ironing the rice paper to cotton using a bonding interface, the tips of my leaf started curling. I decided to stitch a black trim edge to the leaf to firm up the edges. I cut off its supports to do that. Still curling.  After painting, still curling. Finally, a layer or two front and back of Matte Varnish made it stiff enough to not curl - which made it very hard to stitch supports back on it. So, a year to finish what probably only took me about 16 hours. (Some of the steps are pictured below. Click to make it big enough to view.)

Top left to right, drawn and mounted, painting started, painting almost finished.
Bottom left to right, trying to figure out the supports, stitching them, trimming and adding yarn.

It's now complete and hanging on the wall. Finished size is approximately 26"x30". I'm trying to decide if it's worth doing again or maybe I should go back to Illustrator and Spoonflower. Time to deliberate before I pack my bags. It might rest on finding the heavy duty rice paper I want! Ralph's Art Supply is trying to help me with that.

I had to add more supports than I initially planned. And then I wrapped them in a fun
coordinating yarn that doesn't really show up in this picture.