Elton Johnfish and Mick Jaggerfish – 2002 and 2003

I took a fun class that involved laying pieces of fabric in a collage on a shape drawn on fabric.  In the class, we were offered different fish shapes, but whatever the fish started out to be, they sure became something different.

The idea was to take pieces of fabric, preferably unusual prints, cut them up and use them for the different fish parts.  The nuttier the look, the more fun the process became.  You start to look at your fabric in a different way – this looks like gills and this would be a great fish tail.  If I didn’t have the right eyes or lips, I just cut them out of fabric, layered that on more fabric until I created an interesting effect.

The pieces were fused down using a fusible web that can be repositioned.  Tull was used either over the entire fish or just certain parts, however you wanted.  This process was very freeing.  I named the first fish Elton Johnfish because it looks like he’s wearing wild glasses.

I had so much fun with the first fish that I did another.  I named this one Mick Jaggerfish.

After the fish were completed, I positioned them on a background fabric.  Some thread enhancement was done at this point.  Then batting and backing were added and more machine quilting was done, to further enhance the fish and to quilt the background.

I added bright fun borders – inverted prairie points to Elton and a flange to Mick, before binding.  This process can be used for almost any picture – birds, butterflies, landscapes, etc. as long as the original design doesn’t get lost.