Scrim and Sea Grass

Last time I talked about wanting to tone down that sea star a bit.

So I turned to a fabric called scrim which is used in the performance industry to obscure an area of a stage.  Scrim has the wonderful characteristic of appearing sheer when lit from behind and opaque when lit from the front.

Well, actually, I didn't have any scrim which is a little bit more finely woven though still very loose, kind of like a higher-thread count cheesecloth.


It's cotton and very easy to dye.  I used fabric markers to add a few deeper shades of brown to my pre-dyed cheesecloth. The fibers pull apart easily which makes it a very versatile material to use.  Loosely tacking the strands in place with invisible thread allows the fibers to slightly tone down the shine of my star...



The other fiber I played with yesterday was a cotton thread by Thread Gatherer called Sea Grass.  How lucky ~ there's actually a thread called Sea Grass!

In a pile like this, it really does look very grassy.

Sea Grass has a matte and washed-out look which makes it perfect for beach scenes. Unfortunately, when stitched (see the cretan seam treatment below), it retains its matte appeal but loses its "grassiness".

I wanted to use the thread as real grass so I decided to stitch it some grass as a seam treatment in the upper right corner of my block.

I used a turkey work type stitch to secure the blades of grass in place then used my scissors to angle the tips of the blades of grass.



The great characteristic of this woven cotton thread is that it did not fray at the tip when cut so you can really taper each "blade" to appear as real grass. Wonderful!

Here's how the block looked at the end of yesterday...



Hope your weather is as beautiful in your world as it is in mine today.

See you next time!