Hand sculpture with nails

A few weeks ago, on this post, I showed some fabric that I had stamped with washers.  I used one of those fabrics to make a hand sculpture.

I love how it turned out, but all the sewing had to be done by hand, so it was very time-consuming.  I had glued the nails to the fabric, thinking my sewing machine foot would be able to somehow sew over them, and it just did not turn out the way. If I make another one similar to this, I would sew the hand first and leave openings for the nails to be inserted through.

I am working on a series of hand sculptures to include in the Summer Art Market in Denver in June, so I will be posting some others in the future!

Fabric stamped with washers

I wanted to make some fabric with circle designs, but did not want to use stencils.

I decided to create my own stamps using washers and corks.   I glued the washer to the cork with E6000, so it would be easier to stamp with it. I made two different sizes.

Here is the smaller "stamp". I plan to make one of my hand sculptures out of this one.  I used my gelli plate as a palette to put my paint on and spread it out with a brayer. Then I stamped into the paint, then on the fabric.  I was using a Cotton Twill, and next time I will used a standard cotton, as the texture of the twill weave did affect the stamping.  I was going for a grungy imperfect look so I was happy with the results.  This one was with black and brown paints, although it is more black than brown.

This is the larger washer stamp. It is probably 2" in diameter.  I used red, yellow, a couple blues, and a brown paint to stamp these. This picture shows it laying across and hanging down from my dining table. It's a fairly large piece of fabric and was made for a specific project (still in it's early stages).

 And a close up. You can see the color variations and texture. It looks a bit rough up-close, but I like it that way. And from far away, it is uber-fantastic and exactly what I wanted.

Hand sculptures

I had been struggling with how to accomplish the art I wanted to make, using a hand shape as the focus.  I was thinking I would do some on fabric and some of paper, but I wanted them to be at least slightly three dimensional. First I though I would make a hand outline out of metal wire and then attach the fabric or paper to it. My first wire hand shape was too stiff and wouldn't make the curves correctly. The 2nd one was too flimsy and would not hold it's shape.  I did try try cutting a hand shape out of matboard. It was tough on my hands and it took a long time to cut just one.  I felt very stuck for weeks and then had this hand-smack-forehead moment, when I figured out that I could make it even more three dimensional if I did it the same way I made my cat sculpture.

Here is my cat sculpture. I made it a few years ago and had planned to make more, but then moved on to other projects. (I just realized I never posted this on my blog previously. I was going to submit it to a craft magazine, but never did).

I only wanted a basic hand shape so it could be two pieces of fabric. I had a hand shape I had been using for the wire, so I just used that for my first try. And here is the lovely claw hand that is my first attempt.

Surprisingly, attempt two was almost perfect. I decided I didn't like the machine stitching to make the fingers, so I did hand stitching for my new ones.

I meant to take a picture of these final ones when they were still white, but I forgot. So here is an unfinished one in blue, just to show the shape.

Here is the first finished piece. I have ideas for a bunch of these, including some with free-motion stitching, some with 3D items attached.  I plan to make some stamped fabrics, and use some hand-dyed fabrics, some felt, etc for some of the others as well. The hand shape turned out very nice, although there are a few things I will tweak in the next set.