Locomotion Number 1 Special

On Thursday I went to an exhibition of some very large embellished pieces which I quite liked. They had rather large price tags on them too which makes me wonder ‘what if I sold my work!!!’ Then I thought again - No, I don’t want to go there. While I was there I walked down into the town to go to Boyes - one of our last surviving suppliers of fabrics, haberdashery and craft materials. I found some dark grey fabric which was suitable for what I needed ( very cheap too - another good reason for having a Boyes store - everything is so much cheaper than anywhere else.)

I haven’t finished the quilts yet as by this time I was already well into another piece of work and wanted to finish that first before returning to the quilts. This piece is now finished - except for mounting.

It is one of the pieces on my ‘Future pieces to do’ list which I posted a while back. It was a photograph I took at the Darlington railway museum. I took the front half of a wall metal welded sculpture of George Stephenson’s Locomotion Number 1.

I put this photo into the computer and played around with special effects until I created one I liked. Here is where I broke one of my own rules - I didn’t record how I achieved the effect and have been unable to recreate it. I even wrote an article about this for a magazine as my OH reminded me in a sarcastic comment.

Special effect

I changed this into a black and white image then into a lined drawing which was resized and printed out to use as a pattern. Now I had to begin to interpret this using ‘whatever’.

I used many different mediums and techniques to achieve this and here is the completed piece:

Completed Locomotion Number 1 Special

Here are a few close ups of different areas on the piece.

Top section of funnel

I used a painted recycled Kit kat wrapper for the top section.

Upper mid section of funnel

Painted sheers and free machining for this section.

Lower mid section of funnel

Painted felt and embossing powders on this section.

Embossed shim

Embossed shim enhanced with paint and embossing powder.

I used painted kebab sticks for the cranks.

I will probably hang this piece in the workroom which I share with my grandson as he is so keen on trains and railways. He is very reluctant to relinquish his area of the room even though he isn’t here as much as he used to be. He still commandeers the large display board but I think he will let me hang this one.

I can get back to the Quilted Shadows now and finish them so......

Cheers for now everyone.