Making a small fabric collage.

I have been asked to do a demo of my fabric collage method for the Creative Play group that meets monthly at the Embroiderers Guild. So today I did a trial run.

I have made it quite small as I will either use it for the demo or take it with me to the Ballarat Fibre Arts forum. Even if I don't take it to the group, making it today has allowed me to record the step by step procedure so I can be organised for the day.

Participants at the Fibre Arts workshops are asked to donate a 15cm x 15cm work or, even smaller, a 10cm x 10 cm piece. The money raised is either for a student scholarship to attend the week-long workshop, or for a charity, Mind.

For the demo, which is in May, I am hoping to make another sample, using wadding instead of the interfacing, just to see if there is much difference in the outcome. It will give me the option of offering two slightly different methods that might suit the machine and hand sewers better.

This one is fairly simple and I think it will be possible to do it by hand - there will be hand embroiderers at the play group. I used the machine, heaven forbid that I do hand sewing!

I used a square of adhesive interfacing. I made it about 2cm bigger than needed, to allow for shrinkage that happens with heavy sewing.

As the piece is so small, the pieces of fabric needed to be small also. Yet another reason to never throw out anything, even the tiny offcuts.

I found some pieces of silk that I had dyed previously, using eucalyptus leaves or bark, they were the perfect colour for what I wanted and would give a slightly different texture.
I laid the pieces of fabric out on the interfacing and ironed them on. This is the only ironing the fabric gets - I like wrinkled and textured pieces.

Then I sewed over them to carry the colours across areas, meld edges and generally make it very secure.

At this stage, it looked very boring. So I took some more fabric, a very small amount, and ironed it onto some leftover Vliesofix. Then I cut the small pieces even smaller and added them to the collage - using my original photo as the cartoon.

I used this image for a small tapestry in my first year of the Studio Textiles and Design Course. 

I think I went a bit overboard (pun intended) on the masts.

After I had finished sewing, I cut it to size and put a piece of felt on the back and zigzagged around the edges.