Journal covers, fabric collage... #2

hi this is suzanne in ohio and the last time i left you with a fabric arts video we had put together um this little fabric collage type of thing which is intended to be a journal cover you could turn this into anything you want the front of a tote bag or anything like that but what i left you with was the thoughts of how to get a background a feature and what i want to do today is add some embellishments in the way of scraps lace fibers textiles so what i did was i brought i literally reached into my cart and got a handful and put it in this little basket with no pre-thought of anything now i have all this stuff because i save it if i don't throw anything away that's bigger than a postage stamp so i have lots of this stuff and now i figure hey when i'm dead and gone somebody else can throw it away if they don't need it or don't want it but in the meantime i have it to work with so let's just pull some things out of this basket and add them as embellishments to what we have going here now i have some white i have some cream i have these shades of wine so let's just throw a few things out here and see what we like and piece of an old that doesn't go i've got this and that colorway that might work and got big pieces of this edging it was a crocheted edge off of a pillowcase that's quite long and i don't necessarily want to cut into it i have a real oh i don't know what you call it mantra that everything to the highest and best use especially if it's kind of special i i'm real careful about just whacking into something that uh i might never be able to replace again so i'm searching in here oh i like this because it has the texture of that soft tablecloth type texture and then we even have a piece of oh well that was by accident but see there's some brown in that do i want to bring that out or forget that scraps of fabric yarn lace different textures will add a lot what you're doing i always look at something and even if it matches i try to say does it need it does it need it or is it okay without it wrong color wrong kind of fights with it all right i even have a little scrap of a vintage handkerchief there okay here's a piece of just a scrap of very old lemon obviously something has been cut out of it let's see if we can use it now i see a piece of light blue in here and i do have the same light blue there so let's use these things for consideration and i'll just show you how my mind works i like to put things where they're going to be the most eye-catching and a youtube video taught me years ago connect your elements together so i could put that i could put that piece of that crochet right there but it's better if i bring it over here and overlap this and overlap that because then it starts to incorporate all of those elements right there i will snip that off that's just kind of wayward and oh i might throw that away it's smaller than a postage stamp and then this look it was the lining off of something now i'm not going to sit here and bother taking all that apart but what i will do is snip off that piece of twill tape or whatever that was and then play around with this and see if i like the organicness of it and see if i can put it somewhere now i want to keep it in mind that this is going to fold right here on this line because it's a journal cover if i were going to use it for something else i would go ahead and bring my heavy design over this way i just don't want anything right here in the line where it's going to fold that's just going to create problems all right let's see could we use this which color which side is better i like the lighter one for right now i could tuck it right under here and it becomes an extension of that same piece of blue lace that's on that little collage i like this little scrap of this tablecloth but which side i think this side i think i will just corner that off right there and let that fill in the corner now i didn't realize this is a soft kind of robin egg blue doesn't go so i'm going to throw that back in there i've got a little piece of this and that works good let's see i think i would probably do this because that begins to combine these i like this little white lace there's some white white up there i could even go something like this and that gives an interest to the back do i need this well i don't know um [Music] maybe i need something heavier down here to anchor this and give it some weight on the bottom let me look one more time in here i think i'm gonna have to break down and cut a piece of that crocheted edging off yes i guess i will not a horrendous piece but some of it now that has that crochet has a scallop on it which i will when i stitch this down i'll pull that down and make sure i stitch that in such a way that you can readily see that that has that scalloped edge to it i think i will because this is a curve i'm just going to mount it right on the upper edge of that and let's get some pins and just keep it in place and then what i'm going to have to do is turn this right side up and look at it um sometimes i don't know if i have learning disability or what but sometimes i cannot even see color correctly unless i'm looking at it right side up i understand that in art school they make students practice working on pieces upside down well i must have that piece of my brain missing that just don't work for me can't make heads or tails up but let's say we're going to put that there tuck that on the corner i can replace that pin with that and get things stabilized here and then i'll turn it around and look at it there's no need covering up my little bit of decorative embroidery there so i'll pull that down and replace this this will hold all the layers go straight through same thing here and i do believe i'm going to tuck this one underneath this one because i have plenty of that visible now when you're deciding what to put on your surface keep in mind that you can add more texture and more layers with your stitching now let's talk about the stitching for a minute as i said before you could take this to the sewing machine and do a freestyle free motion sewing on top of this and it would still look great but i tend to want to do by hand i like that puckery quilty kind of look about it so the first question i'll ask myself is do i want to do an invisible stitch such as just to get it in place or do i want to stitch down with embroidery thread and make the embroidery thread part of my design on lots of things i add some embroidery but it's not everything sometimes i let my little quilty stitch be part of the design in any case i have a few needles threaded with embroidery bed and i'll just show you how i go about that but for starters i want to turn it around and ask myself does it need anything okay i can see one thing that i don't care for and that is this yes i want to overlap but i don't want it to be smack dab in the center like that it's just too predictable to the brain i like something just a little bit different so now remember this has a hidden pocket so what i'm going to do is tuck that underneath the edge there and i will stitch that down but i'm not going to stitch the pocket to it i'm only going to stitch the pocket going around these three sides because this will be an invisible pocket like we said earlier okay now i'm beginning to ask myself where would i want to stitch and i really want to stitch where i'm going to capture the most edges and that will stabilize my piece and then i can move on from there i think i would start stitching this one because it's going to capture this this and everything underneath it so let me just show you what i how would go about it first i'm going to decide is it going to be a neat stitch a sloppy stitch just a whip stitch or am i going to do a fancy embroidery stitch and this is so busy it doesn't matter but what color i mean it doesn't matter if i use plain stitch but what color and i really would like to add a little bit more of this green because i have some dark green here and some there but if i add some dark green thread on top of that then you can see that i'm adding to the colorway and let's get down just a little closer and i'm gonna i've already got my needle threaded but i wanted to wait a minute and show you how i tie my knot i learned how to tie a quilter's knot a couple years ago now if you're quilting you have to learn this knot because the purpose is is to put your needle in slide the thread all the way in and give it a little yank and then that quilter's knot goes inside so you have no visible knot anywhere but still it's a very neat knot and i like to use it even for other things so what you do is i have my thread over here i'm going to take my needle and i'm going to lay it across my finger and i'm going to capture that thread right there under the needle now i'm going to go around three times now i'm going to pinch it with my other finger push the needle up through and holding on to that thread then i'm going to pull it through and i have an automatic knot and the only reason that looks a little messy is some of the tails got cut now i have three layers of or three strands of floss here if i'm using a dmc sometimes i don't always use three strands because if the pigment is dark and stiff that gets too clunky for me if it's a cheap off-brand kind of floss then most of the time it's three strands because their ply is it's just not as hefty so now i know this is going to look upside down to you but what i want to do is just let you watch while i get started with this and then i'll turn it back around but i can't work upside down so let's work this way now just to note about this what i want to do is go all the way through with any stitches that are possibly can because i'm making a sandwich here i have this piece of muslin as this sort of as a stabilizer and that is what i think of it as because i could have replaced that with a very thin piece of pellon but i like the softness of this and i use pollen on plenty of things for other reasons but this a little bit softer a little bit more give to it so that's my first layer and then i have a layer of that felt and then i have my collage layers so i can either start on the outside with this and sometimes i will and i let my not show i don't care about things like that on fabric collage because that's part of the uniqueness of it that's part of what makes it interesting all that textile tech tactile textile and tech tactile things add to your piece now i would just want to make sure the little edge of this get comes right up here on top of my puffy that's what i call my little collages and i'll just hold that with my thumb and i can feel it as i go and i want to make sure that it overlaps and i'm just going to take big in and out stitches and i did not make myself a thimble so bear with me and i don't have my wax real close but big in and out stitches so they're real visible and they become a design element all by themselves now you won't have to sit there and watch me do this whole thing but i wanted you to see how i start i hope you got a little fabric collage together and have it ready if not get one together and come back and watch this video again or watch the next one and stitch with me and then we'll both get more mentally healthy because of it because it is so therapeutic so stress relieving and then you have something beautiful and useful to show for your time and see i have very little fabric here to catch but i'm going to do my best to stay in the fibers that are strong enough and here's where i really need my thimble i don't have a real thimble i can't wear one never could but i make myself a little cardboard thimble every time i sew and boy is that wonderful i just love it i find myself wearing it around the house the rest of the day because it's so comfortable i forget i have it on when i notice that it gets wet when i wash my hands then voila now i'm just going to let that take its natural curve down and um let's take a couple more stitches here now i would just like to say don't forget that what we do our fabric arts our paper arts nothing is perfection it's the imperfection that is so quaint and so wonderful and what makes things so interesting i have a terrible habit of being too rigid i really do i was a garment sewer and by golly everything had to be perfect and it took me a long time to come out of that mindset of perfection straight edges neat finished off oh forget it now here i am there right there and i still have plenty of thread on my needle so what could i do i could come up right here in this piece of burgundy or wine color i should say and i could go ahead and stitch down this edge and i can use any kind of stitch i want let's do just a couple cross stitches now many of you out there probably know far more embroidery stitches than i do i don't know very many of the decorative stitches i'm a real good embroiderer as far as following the lines my stitches even and neat my mother taught me and she was an expert nothing looked coarse or chunky every little stitch fit right in next to each other and overlap slightly like it's supposed to and i'm a good that kind of embroidery but as far as knowing embroidery stitches i don't and the frugal part of me is not crazy about some of them because they use so much darn thread now why i'm hoarding all my thread at this age in my life i do not know now i'll help have not been off the camera i've got what will be uh four cross stitches right here and then because i still have thread in my needle i can go along this edge but i'll change my stitch so i'm just going to go in here and up and then i want to show you that i'm coming all the way through with my stitches i'm creating my sandwich embedding my sandwich together so let's just take a couple long running stitches more of it visible than not and real long one tiny little in and out and that leaves me lots of that green thread visible on this side okay all right you get that idea so i'm just going to stop right there with that one and i have one more a couple more needles threaded so let's jump somewhere else and see what we might do um i've got a real nice cream color here whoop jerked out two needles together and i've got this cream color and i could use that to stitch this down so again a quilter's knot i'm going to grab it press it hard underneath the needle wrap the end around three times pinch it with my other finger and slide through and there i have a quilter's knot i know it keeps jumping now the screen so i'll just work on this from this angle and i would go about not trying to capture all of these loose edges on this piece because hey that's what makes it quaint i like that raggedy edge look and all those little pieces of that textile sticking out i like it so i sure don't want to stitch it down so tight that i give up all that movement there and just jump right over here and just catch part of that and because that's so thick there i'm going to pull my needle through in the back boop got a little loop got a little loop get it off of there and pull it through and then come back and capture that tip up that little textile you can see how loosey-goosey it is because it's just a scrap it's in the process of fraying that's what makes it so wonderful okay now i'll just jump over here and get these little what you could possibly think of as tips of leaves or petals or something and let's just do one more and then we'll switch to something different i'll leave it for a later time i hope your brain is churning and asking yourself what could you work on what could you get and do some slow stitching now you know the term slow stitching has really picked up some momentum out there in youtube crafty land embroidery and quilting has always been slow stitching and you know the japanese stitches there's two different kinds of them those have always been slow stitching but somebody came up with that term and um have launched it out there into never never land as something brand new it's not brand new and anything that you're doing by hand automatically ends up slow stitching so you might have a different idea in your mind what slow stitching is because of some other tutorial or something you've seen and it could be the japanese stitches or it could just be embroidery or just that that in and out um just rows and rows of compacted stitches that's fine if that's your idea of slow stitching but also please incorporate the whole concept of quilting and embroidery those are slow stitches as well nothing new under the sun right all right now in my wisdom what i know i should do is stitch this down because what i need to do is lift this pocket up pin it backwards out of my way for a minute and go all the way around this little rosette type of thing now i really would like to have white thread and just do that kind of invisible but i didn't thread a white needle but i have light pink so i'm going to make another quilters knot here and i'm just going to do this for the sake of keeping this in place underneath the edge of this pocket so i'm just going to go in and out enough to catch this little crocheted rosette which was cut off of a dresser scarf i believe and just do enough stitching to make sure that's down and that won't interfere with anything that someone might want to put in that pocket and i've got a nice sharp needle this time good one susan i should sort out my needles and get all my good ones ready oh they've gotten messed up and mixed up i had a sewing sort of sewing class at my house all last winter and i put out tons of needles and straight pins and everything for people to use and you know how that goes um you never know where half of them got to and they're all mixed up there is nothing like a good needle and i love this needle that's in my hand right now because it is long um it might even be considered a doll needle one of the shorter doll needles but it's good steel and it's slick and it's very sharp and it's very strong and i you can see i'm almost all the way around there so i'm just going to quit that for now and fold the edge of this pocket back up and we can see how it's going to tuck right under that edge so the next thing i should do is secure this side of this pocket up this way now at this point i could say to myself you know i could add buttons i could add yo-yos i could add more lace i could do anything i want to do as a matter of fact i thought i had a yo-yo in this i do i've got one yo-yo look at that the perfect right color too it was in the same basket of stuff here so let me ask where it serves the best highest in use that's going to be right on the fold so i'm not going to do that that's going to be on the fold maybe it should tuck right under the edge of that sort of and off to the side slightly and then i'll put a button right in the center up that's kind of nice i guess one other thing i could do is i could mount it right on top of that rosette i like that also i think i'll do that and then put a button in the center of it which i won't get around to today but because i need white or pink thread to throat to sew that on or you could not even sew it on you could just attach it as you attach your button well i hope this has given you some ideas and i want to get you started on some kind of fabric collage whether you want to use them for a journal cover or the front of a tote bag or a book cover of you know such as a bible cover or something like that or maybe you just want to make a fabric collage and put a little tab on it for hanging and give it as a gift if you give something as a gift or even a journal cover you might want to consider some kind of a placard on here that maybe holds a thought-provoking word or you might want to think about adding a placard out of paper after you get done so let me just cut a little piece of cardboard here and this is cardstock good cardstock and you can see how you could either do it out of cardstock and paper such as or you could do it out of fabric and put you know a second layer in there stitch around it and write a word on it now if you put a word on it you can either embroidery the word stamp it with an alphabet stamp write it on with micron pens or permanent ultra sharpie markers just anything you want to do you could even tear this or we can take the corners off and punch a hole in it as if it's a tag so there's endless ideas what to do with your work so there you have my ideas for today and my goal was to get you jump started into something so i want to thank you for watching and i want you to come back real soon i will have most of this stitched and i will show you how to put the lining on the inside go around the edges and maybe add some pockets on the inside all right thanks for watching if you're interested in fabric art please give me a thumbs up and leave me a comment and i'll be back real soon bye bye

Channel: Suzanne In Ohio Suzanne Cogar

Views: 49

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: fabric collage

Id: kZRByl43fAA

Length: 33min 33sec (2013 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021