MIA Post

Carol here, back after falling down the winter's rabbit hole.

I've been working on a few new things but mostly resting up, reading and drinking hot tea (and coffee).

One of the things that I do in the warmer weather is to rust fabric and different fibers so that I have plenty to play with in the cooler months.
I've been playing around with creating collages out of bits and pieces of rusted and naturally dyed fabric.
I do a compulsive amount of hand stitching on them in the evening when my husband and I sit together. I have to have something in my hands or I go crazy.

I thought I would share a photo of one of the most beautiful pieces of rust fabric I have ever had the pleasure of unrolling in my rust bin.
The photo really does not do it justice.

It looks like a sunset, doesn't it?

I don't think I can bear to cut this piece up.
So it will stay on my design wall for now.

I'll close with a couple of close-ups of a new collage I am stitching on.
I'm almost ready to call it quits on this one.

I still haven't decided what to do with it when I do finish the hand stitching.
I'll try to remember to do a follow up post.

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!