Followers on Instagram will have seen that I created some fabric from a photograph of a rock I took on our recent holiday to Broome [later add: I was inspired by the magnificent fabric that Meggipeg created from one of her mother’s paintings]. Because of the colours, I found that I am well camouflaged against the rocks in Coalseam Conservation Park where we visited a couple of weeks ago to look at the wildflowers.
This is the photograph I used. It is a rock at Gantheaume Point in Broome, most famous for having dinosaur prints in the rocks. This isn’t one of those famous rocks, but I was taken with the colours; I love the pink and the ochre and would never have thought of combining the two.
I did some cropping and then used the mirror feature to create the fabric, which I had printed at Spoonflower.
I ordered a yard (why only a yard?) of the organic cotton knit ultra, which luckily had a bit of stretch as I had no idea what to do with this. Unfortunately, the logical way to use the pattern was the opposite way to the stretch, which caused me a bit of head scratching. I have to admit that I had no idea how this fabric would turn out and was quite surprised at how defined the pattern was. You can see that there is a strong pattern to the right hand side and a slightly less strong pattern to the left of it. This left me with a bit of a conundrum. I needed to feature those two patterns and they were close together. I thought about a skirt, but it didn’t work, and then I went to my old standby the Deer & Doe Plantain. I redrew the pattern so that I could lay the whole front and back on the single layer of fabric, lining up the pattern and top and tailing the front and back so that I could fit them on.
I had just enough at the top of each piece to get a short sleeve out, centreing the pattern. Of course, I should have sized up as the stretch is less than I would normally use for this pattern, but hey ho, it worked – sort of!
I’ve got to say that I’ve learned a lot from this little exercise, and will do it again, with a great deal more editing before I get the fabric printed. I will also have a much better idea about what I want to make from the fabric before I order it, but I’m not regretting getting this piece printed (and another, different, piece, yet to be made) as I really like this top.
Every time I look at it I get lost in the pattern. I’m not sure if it was our recent attendance at Aladdin the musical (compliments of Tom and Bridgette), but I can see genies, and all sorts of wizard like characters in this fabric. Some of the faces do weird me out a little…
Please excuse the hair in these photos – I had a swim and then parked a hat on my wet hair, which is not ideal!
The back has a very strong pattern.
I think this is a lovely way to get souvenir fabric. It is unique to me and is a really nice source of conversation. We were in the Geraldton Art Gallery (fascinating video on Morse Code showing there) and someone admired it. I’m sure they regretted commenting as I launched into a description of where it came from!
After a few wears, I have decided that the front neckline is too high so I’ve unpicked the whole thing and lowered it.