Birth of a Banner: The Saga Continues

The second banner for the United Methodist Church of Hartford is coming along.  Today, I cut out the tree pattern that had been chalked onto the tree fabric before I painted it brown.  Fortunately, the chalk lines were visible through the rust and brown paint, so once I bonded Steam A Seam to the back of the tree pieces, I was able to cut out the tree images on the chalk lines and place it on the prepared background.
But before I could bond the tree to the background, I needed to put the foliage down.  So it was time to choose the greens for the leaves.  Who knew I would have this many green fabrics in my stash?

In the background of this photo you can see the tree image I'm using for design inspiration for this banner.

Next I had to cut those green fabrics into confetti-like pieces to scatter across the blue sky:

At left in the photo above is a photo of one of the murals in the church.  I'm taking my color cues off it and the other two murals in the chancel.

My rotary cutter and Omnigrid ruler were essential for that.  I ended up with piles of tiny pieces. 

Next, I used old towels to transform my cutting table to an ironing board.  Then I spread the blue sky fabric onto the towels and covered it with Misty Fuse,  a heat-activated adhesive with the consistency of a spiderweb.  By putting Misty Fuse onto the sky background, I was providing the glue that would fasten down the confetti-like leaves.

Once the Misty Fuse was down, I could sprinkle the "leaves" onto it.  If I then cover the whole thing with a layer of tulle and apply an iron, the Misty Fuse will melt and bond the leaves and the tulle to the sky background.  Can you see why they call this process "entrapment"?  Many thanks to Laura Curran for teaching me how to do it.

Now the confetti-like leaves are sprinkled on top of an all-but-invisible layer of Misty Fuse, a heat-activated adhesive.

I put a layer of tulle over the leaves because when the Misty Fuse melts, it will bond both the leaves and the tulle to the background, with the tulle holding the leaves in place.

If I didn't cover the whole thing with parchment paper before ironing it, the adhesive would melt directly onto the iron.

So I set my iron to cotton and apply heat with a little elbow grease

Once the leaves were bonded down, I placed the pre-cut tree images over the whole thing and bonded them down.

I think it's looking pretty good.  Next step:  sewing down the trunk and branches, because you never know how long the glue of fusible bonding will last over time.