Designer Lynne Farris creates a seascape room screen by adding fabric and three-dimensional appliques to a three-panel fabric room screen. Materials: White or off-white three-panel fabric screen
Faux suede fabric in rust (tree) and beige (leaves, mound of sand)
Testor VisionsB. Air-Painting System, with dark-green and gold water-based paint
Moire fabric in dark blue (sky), teal (water) and beige (sand)
Thread
Glue gun and glue
Star stencils
Semitransparent shimmery gold or silver fabric (starfish)
Small amount of fiber-fill stuffing
Adhesive-backed paper
Piece of cardboard
Cardboard tube
Scissors
Sewing machine
Steam iron
Cellophane tape
Optional: thin polyester batting
- Determine the scene you'll create. Lynne selected a simple seascape that could easily be extended across all three panels. Sketch your design, and divide it into thirds to fit onto the panels.
- Remove the three fabric panels from the screen frame. Lynne's panels attached to the frame with buttoned tabs, which made them easy to remove.
- Arrange the moire fabrics according to your sketched plan for each panel. Match the horizontal edges of the sky (blue), water (teal) and sand (beige), and with right sides facing, machine-stitch the pieces together. Press the seams open.
- Press the top and sides under to create clean seam edges, and hot-glue each piece to its respective fabric panel background.
Optional: If you want the moire fabric to puff out from the screen, hand-stitch a layer of batting to the back of the area before hot-gluing the fabric in place on the screen. Lynne added a layer of batting behind the sand. - This project featured Stick 'N' Stencils by Visions, which are no longer available. Set star stencils in place on the fabric sky, and apply gold spray paint, using the Visions airbrush (figure A). If necessary, hold the stencils in place with tape.
- To create starfish, draw freehand stars on adhesive-backed paper, and cut them out. Stick the cutouts on the sand portion of the scene, and use the airbrush to spray gold paint around them so that their imprints remain (figure B).
- Sew the rust-colored faux suede into a long tube to create the trunk of a palm tree. To create a pattern on the trunk, slip a cardboard tube into the fabric, and bunch the fabric together. Using the airbrush, spray up and down the bunched fabric with green paint (figure C). When the paint is dry, unbunch the fabric, and remove it from the cardboard tube.
- Cut leaf designs from the beige suede fabric. Place them on a piece of cardboard, and spray them green with the airbrush. To create patterns and lines on the leaves, spray them again with green, this time blocking the spray with a piece of cardboard moved across the leaf, lightly spraying as you go (figure D). Let dry. Cut the leaves apart if they'll extend across more than one panel.
- Use the stencil cutout to create small stuffed three-dimensional starfish (figure E). Trace the pattern onto three layers of fabric: two pieces of green background fabric, wrong sides together, with semitransparent fabric in between. Stitch around the star shape. Clip the center, turn and stuff. Hand-stitch the center closed.
- Place the tree trunk across one of the panels diagonally so that the trunk overlaps the sand. Cut off the part that extends beyond the panel, turn it under, and hot-glue in place. Hot-glue the cut-off piece to the adjacent panel, turning under and gluing as necessary.
- Hot-glue leaves in place on the tree.
- To produce a mound of sand, cut a piece of faux suede to cover the bottom of the tree trunk. Arrange the stuffed starfish on the sand, with the sewn centers against the panel so they don't show. Hot-glue the mound of sand and the starfish in place (figure F).
- When the seashore scene on all three panels is complete, reattach the panels to the screen frame.
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