Okay out I went for a drive to the park, passed several homes, and an industrial park. Sat on a bench for a while and came home passing that same industrial park. This time however, I noticed a gate with a lock and thought to myself, "you'll need the right key to open that one." Bing. An idea was beginning to germinate. I had painted some fabric that resembled an industrial park and posted about it. Remember? It looked like this.
If I cut it in half and use the lower half, it might work to represent a chain link fence. Keys? Will they work? How will I portray them? I remembered a stenciling technique I had seen done with Shiva paintsticks. I also remembered a pointillist technique I had learned. I found an image of an old key and went to work. I also gathered up old keys around the house, traced them onto freezer paper, cut out the shape and pressed the resulting stencil to the fabric. This just might work.
I went on a hunt through antique stores, thrift shops and found an old skeleton key and decided that I would do a rubbing. I didn’t like the result, so I set the key aside. The piece needed some hand stitching along with the machine quilting to add what I thought would give it some depth.
Hop over to the Tangled Textiles blog to see what the others have produced.
