Preparation

LIKE THE CIRCLES THAT YOU FIND IN THE WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND

Reflections Design Preparation Painting Stitching Display

The first two lines drawn in were at 45 degrees to the seam, to form the right angle for the quarter circle. These could have been drawn with a large protractor but we couldn’t find ours so resorted to constructing them by measuring with a ruler.

The arcs were then drawn, between those lines, with a pencil attached to a piece of string. To correspond with the measurements on Matt and Katie’s project, the largest was 202 cm and the smallest 52 cm, leaving 150 cm to be divided up into the ten bands we had calculated.

The other straight lines were added at equal distances to make 12 sections.

Finally, diagonal lines were drawn on the small sections as shown in the previous diagrams. In reality, for these lines to appear straight in the mirror they need to be slightly curved. This would have been more difficult and not very well-defined once the shapes were painted so we opted for straight lines instead.

The part of the fabric that would be nearest to the pillar would be cut away later but had to be there for all the drawing as it included the point that all the arcs and lines radiate from.

The shape was cut out leaving extra fabric all round to create borders later.

There were many criss-crossing lines. They are hard to see in the photo but were clear enough to use as a guide for painting. They were drawn in pencil so that they could be rubbed out if we made mistakes - and we did.

In hindsight I am glad we did not use a darker coloured fabric as it would have been much more difficult to draw the lines.

It was now ready for painting.

We have a great deal of fabric left over from the days when we used to do screen printing. The original plan was to use navy blue so that the anamorphic design would be the same colours as our original blanket but we did not have a big enough piece of fabric. The design is based on a circle with a radius of 202 cm so the fabric needed to be approximately 2 metres by 3 metres. (If we had chosen to make a semi-circle we would have needed 2 metres by 4 metres and did not have enough space to lay that out.)

We needed to use fabric made from a natural fibre so that it would hold the paint. It had to be substantial but easy to fold to be transported from one place to another. It needed to be an eye-catching colour and dark enough not to show any dirt after being laid on the floor.

We finally opted for a pair of bright yellow 100% cotton curtains (bought in a sale when tab top curtains went out of fashion.) One curtain was wide enough, but not high enough so the two curtains were stitched together. It was then taped to the floor to stop it moving. The join in the fabric gave a good vertical line to work with.