Collage Fodder

Carol here.

My husband and I have been rusting fibers for several years now.

I love the color and texture that the rusted fabric offers.
I've made several wall pieces that began their life as bits and pieces of different rusted fabrics and fibers. It's a great base to build wonderfully textured art on.

This formula also works for felted backgrounds.

After working on the last two projects (Kindle cover here, here and needle case here) that had felted bases, I decided to use the same approach for a collage that I have in mind.
I wanted to create a palette of rust fabric on which to hand and machine stitch.

I am approaching this project much as I do most of my projects - with an open mind and a vague plan.
My vague plan is to felt the base, hand stitch on top of this, then add a machine stitched image over that.
I must admit I'm a little nervous about risking the hand stitched base when I add the machine stitching.
But my "fly by the seat of my pants" attitude is that I can always redo the base...just make another one, right?

So far I've felted two small pieces and managed to get some hand stitching done on each one.

I've also machine stitched a copyright free image (that I re-drew) on one of them.

I haven't done any free motion machine stitching (or would this be free motion embroidery?) in a long time.
As soon as I began stitching this small motif, I remembered how much I loved doing it!
So I definitely will be doing more of this.

I have one other section almost completed and I'll show more next time.

I hope that you all are creating every day.
You gotta flex those creative muscles if you want to keep them!

Stitched Felting

Hi all - Carol Sloan here.

I love hand stitching even though I don't normally do a lot of it.
But recently, it seems to have taken over my studio table.

When I visit my friend (and group member) Liz Kettle in Colorado, I love to play with her felting machine.
This year I thought about it before I went out there and wanted to create a couple of base pieces to stitch on at my leisure.

Well, you know how that went...I got so involved in the creation of the small piece that I quit working on everything that I was supposed to be doing!

I wanted to make a cover for my electronic reader for a couple of reasons.
One- because I hated looking at the plain black vinyl cover.
And two, because I could.

I love handmade items like that.

So I used the machine and felted down a few pieces of silk, torn scarves, roving and bits of this and that.
Good friend that she is, Liz let me pick out thread to use too!
I added a lot of mine when I got home too.

Once I started stitching, it became a tiny obsession.
I spent hours (lots of them) stitching on the cover or thinking about what I would do next.
Well, I guess that I thought more about what thread or what color I would use next as opposed to what I would do next.
The doing part seems to work itself out when I get out of the way.
Here's a few shots of the completed cover.

I decided against adding beads since I would be holding the Kindle in my hands while reading.
I figured that the beads could become a problem if they were in the wrong place.

And, I was ready to finish the project as I had another one calling to me.

Now, where is that rusted fabric...?