Collage exercise

We are currently working on making collages in our design course.  For the first time, I took fabric to the class, as we were instructed to do.

I took a small sample of fabrics as I had nothing in mind to do. I'm not sure if this was a good idea or not. It did mean that I didn't have too much stuff to think about but I also came up with a rather muted collage.

 

One of the exercises was to make a recognisable image using collage.  Quite a few of us chose trees, without any collaboration about what to do.

Then we were to cut the collage up and put it back together in a pleasing design.

 I did a very rough drawing of my tree, then cut that up to see if I thought it might work.

We ran out of time (due to other things happening in the class) and I finished it at home.

I cut it up and laid it out in a variety of ways, using the same background cloth. Not very inspiring!

I came across a piece of fabric that I had recently sun-dyed; it seemed to be in a similar colour range, so I decided to use that.

Turns out it wasn't such a good idea as all I could see was the background and not the original collage.  Then I put some more little bits of fabric over the stronger parts of the background, trying to mute it down to a similar level.

Once I thought it might do, I did some free motion sewing.

It took hours to play around with and all I have ended up with it a piece that I think might make a background for something else - or to go in the samples folder.  Lucky it was just an exercise.

But I have confirmed something that has been becoming clearer to me lately, in my sewing and tapestry weaving - I like texture.