Monday 27 February 2012

Shell sections

The shell sections are actually quite stiff, as they're two layers of fabric, a layer of felt, heavy machine stitching and a lot of beads, but still not stiff enough - they need to be mounted on something.

The finished sections need to curve, so card is no use as it'll just bend, so hunting through cupboards (I'm trying to do this project from stash, remember), turned up some heavy weight Vilene.  I don't think it's quite pelmet weight, but it should do.

I cut out Vilene shapes to match each of the nine shell sections, each one the same size as the stitched area:


They were each placed on the underside of the matching shell section:


The fabric hem was folded over and stretched over the Vilene shape, using herringbone stitch in a linen thread:


I tried to pull the fabric sections taught but not too tight, as I didn't want them to be pulled out of shape.

Here's the same section from the front:


And all nine sections, mounted onto the Vilene:


Next, the backs of the sections need to be covered.

5 comments:

  1. It's looking more and more intriguing!

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  2. What is "pelment weight", clever lady?

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  3. It's a very heavy weight Vilene, presumably intended for curtain-making (stiffening pelmets), but good for all sort of craft uses. If you're lucky, your local department store might stock it, but I need to send away for it, e.g. to Barnyarns (I'm trying to paste a link here but it won't let me. Try searching for it instead).

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  4. And what has it done to my name??

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  5. Your beaded shells are looking good! I noticed that Blogger has been messing up all special characters, punctuation and the like. What a great program!

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