Mermaid Class!

Today I took a sewing class on mermaids, and I came home PUMPED. It was so much fun to work on a project just for me, with no deadlines over me, no worrying about what someone else would like or not like. Aaaaaah...what a great break from all of the UFOs I have been trying to finish!

The class topic of mermaids may sound dumb...but the techniques we learned were anything but. We learned how to paint on fabric, which was AWESOME. A while back I bought a book called "Fabric +  Paint + Thread = Fabulous" and tried to learn how to paint fabric based on it. But learning from a book is a lot harder for me than learning in a class. I feel like I finally have the confidence to go paint my own landscapes, and use paint and colored pencils to enhance fabric in subtle ways. 

Check this out:

Here are the photos of our teacher painting the sample. It's crazy how dark it looks like she is putting it on, but once the paint dries it is very subtle. This is something I just didn't understand from reading my book and trying on my own...wondering why my paint was never showing up!

The first good sign was that she uses the most basic, cheap paints she can find, which is what I use too. Yay!

Here she is putting what looks like a terrifying amount of paint down.

 And here is what her sample looked like after the first coat...so subtle!

 Here are two shots of the second coat being applied.

Okay, so feeling encouraged after watching our (totally pro) teacher, here is what happened to my sample:

Here is the "before" shot, where I just have a pencil line of her outline

Here is in progress of painting:

And here she is nearly done..stills needs some finishing touches on the eyes.

All done!

(she will eventually be holding a seashell, that is why her hand is like it is)

And below is what she looked like at the end of day one. Her tail fins were actually pretty difficult because I had to use mistyfuse to attach multiple layers of sheer fabrics together. The tail is actually somewhat translucent in real life.  She will also eventually have lots of long flowing hair!

This was a fun class to not only learn about painting and cool embellishment techniques, but to learn more about designing your own art quilt. We were able to pick our own mermaids and tails and I was able to see how to put a new tail on an existing pattern - sounds simple, but it helps me wrap my head around how to alter existing shapes/patterns/etc for future art quilts.

Anyways, a super fun class! Now unfortunately I must pack up my entire sewing are in preparation to move, so she will have to wait some time to be finished.