Mother Earth Assemblage

I had dyed a wool sweater, shown here, for an assemblage project. I wanted to make a pregnant woman out of the sweater, with a staircase in her womb.

I had found a set of staircase bookends last year at a second hand shop. I painted a box black and glued the staircase in (shown on left).  I cut the woman's figure out of 1/4" board with a friend's scroll saw. (Man, I want one of those!)

I traced the shape onto canvas, then I hand stitched the canvas to the sweater so I could put some polyfil in for her chest.

I cut a hole out of the sweater for the box to come out of.

I used Beacon's glue to attach the sweater hole to the box. I had left tabs around the sweater opening to attach to the box sides. 

I added a plumbers clamp ring (I have no idea what it is really called, but that sounds pretty good, right?). It comes round, so I took pliers to bend it to a rectangle. The side with the screw on it was left longer, in order to get the ring around the box. Then I used a screw driver to tighten the ring. It actually worked really well.

 
Looking good!

I stuffed polyfil in the appropriate places then used a staple gun to wrap the sweater around to the back side. I plan to cut the back piece of the sweater to cover the backside and hide all the staples. I will just use Beacon's glue to attach it.

I submitted this to a fiber art show and we will see if it gets in!