Monday, October 31, 2005

Assembly Line?

I had coffee with Kate after I had my gallery review on Friday and she asked how I could possibly work in an assembly line?! Hey, I took some pictures, I can show you what a mean.

First I choose fabrics and lay them all out on my ironing board. You can also see my sketches of shrine, arch and house shapes. I'm keeping in mind that all of these pieces will be framed in 8 x 10 frames. I use this same system for my postcards and fit as many onto the ironing board as comfortable.


Then I begin to fuse the major shapes. You can see I added another background. I found a piece of prefused fabric and it wanted to join the party. That's why it's sitting on release paper. The other backgrounds are not fused. (Though they could be if I wasn't stingy with WU or lazy.)


After all the shapes are fused, I get started picking out embellishments. This is where the assembly line is particularly efficient. If I had to get out my ribbon and trim box, dig through it for one piece, then put it away, then get out my charms box, dig through it, then put it away... then the button box, the stamp box, the bead box, the "other interesting fibers" box etc... I'd lose interest and the studio would be a mess.

Here's a picture of one of the shrines with the potential embellishments. Now each set of embellishments gets put in a little zip loc bag with the background fabric. (If you look back at the
finished shrines you see I did not use the silver fish, the gold starfish, the white Barbie shoe or several of the beads... oh well, they just get restocked in their appropriate boxes.)



The assembly line stops here pretty much. Now I work on each item individually by free motion quilting if needed, hand embroidery, sewing (and gluing) on embellishments, sandwiching and finishing.

Oh, you may also notice that the green/purple/pink background piece never got finished. It was missing something and I lost interest a bit and I needed to get the ones that were done all framed and ready to go.. Oh well, go with the flow.

7 comments:

Joanna Stein said...

YOU should get a bigger ironing board! For sure.

All your work is so impressive and beautiful! Congrats on such a wonderful first experiece at selling. I hope they are all so positive.

Anonymous said...

deborah, good morning and congrats on the gallery. Make plenty of art because the pieces will be walking out the door pretty fast. You're so talented and I am so lucky because my very own Deborah Boschert originals are on the way to me where they will have a place of honor in my home. Can't wait... I am re-doing a room in my house and have picked a sort of pumpkin color for two walls in prep for framing and hanging the postcards. Your in my thoughts. Thanks, Dee

Anonymous said...

I am now a true believer in assembly line production. You won me over with the idea of putting each box away... and avoiding a potential mess. Huh. I'll have to try that. And you produce so much great work in one "session".
As ever, you inspire me.

Anonymous said...

I found this idea great!
Don't think I've told you that I read your blog pretty often and find that you're getting into a gallery/ selling stuff, rather exiting.
Wish you the best :-)

Sonji Hunt said...

I love the assembly line for small work. It halps in blowing that big creative bubble around yourself while working. Big fun. Great work...as usual.

Beate Knappe said...

Your Great work inspire me.

Judy Scott said...

Brilliant idea and I really will try this when I can clear a big enough space!!!! Jude xx