Clapping hands – 2020.06.29

Have you heard of Ian Berry? He’s an artist who works in the medium of denim jeans – check out his website www.ianberry.org to see his amazing artwork.

I’ve been following Ian on Instagram and Facebook, and was intrigued by his ‘I Clap For’ project. You can read about the project on this website www.iclapfor.com. Recently, I saw that Ian was inviting other artists to make clapping hands for the project, and I decided to participate.

I emailed Ian on Friday night saying I would like to participate. He replied, asking if I could have my hands done by Monday – because there are special displays planned for July 5th, the birthday of the UK National Health Service.

There’s nothing like a tight deadline to motivate me, so I spent Saturday designing and creating my 2 pair of hands, and on Sunday I finished them up and emailed my photos to Ian. He animated them, and you can see my clapping hands with many other artists here on the website.

Here’s how I made my clapping hands. I used Ian’s templates for the hands, which saved me a lot of time. I wanted to use wild colors, so I pulled out a lot of fabrics, and spent an hour or so finding 2 sets of fabric with light, medium and dark values.

For each hand, I cut the entire hand from the medium value fabric, then added the shadows and highlights. I used Steam a Seam fusible, which I can finger-press in place. If required, I can reposition the pieces before using the iron to fuse the fabrics together. After cutting and positioning the pieces for the first set of hands, I checked to make sure the values were working.

Satisfied with this, I continued to trace and cut the pieces for the second set of hands.

I fused each completed hand to black felt, then quilted the detail lines with thick black thread. Then I trimmed the felt close to the hand, leaving a thin black outline.

Here are my 2 sets of hands.

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As I was working on this project, I made a note of a couple of tips about using fusible web and synthetic felt:

• Pen or pencil – normally I trace my designs onto the backing paper with a mechanical pencil. But I noticed that I was getting smears of pencil all over my fingers, and then on some of the lighter fabrics. Part way through this project I switched from pencil to permanent marker. I think that will be my new standard practice.
• Parchment paper – always put a piece of parchment paper over the paper and fabrics before pressing. This prevents the pen or pencil from transferring to the sole-plate of the iron. It also prevents any wayward fusible web from adhering to the sole-plate. And if you are pressing synthetic felt, it prevents the felt from melting to the sole-plate (guess how I discovered that!)

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Linking up with Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday

Edited July 1 to add: I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.
~ Love Laugh Quilt Monday Making
~ WIP Wednesday @ The Needle & Thread Network