MAKING ART TOGETHER! FABRIC COLLAGE

here we go hi hello welcome so sad i came home from work went upstairs to get ready and i left all my materials everything at school i don't know my old bag that i have prepped through the day i was like oh i want this one oh i want that material oh i want this oh no it's my school at my desk right at the foot and i was like so i'm going to be an observer today well that's the kind of time that i had oh my god if you happen to have paper like scrapbooking paper you can do the same thing with paper i uh no i don't do scrapbooking i have a bunch of paper but that's um i'm just so uh let me get my one um let me go upstairs and see if i find anything else are we waiting how many more people are we waiting for i don't know we had like 75 registered we usually end up with about 20 something so all right i figure we'll wait for about 10 after and perfect see how it goes all right well i'm going to have some materials here and i'll see what i can scrap together and uh but i just didn't want to miss it i want to watch and learn me too i've been so excited about this one yeah yeah will you always uh sponsor i mean sponsor we get fabulous art teachers in and thank you i love it i i stalk the ones that that make me the most interested and the most happy to look at their stuff and um dawn's been a trooper thank you yeah look around and see what i have welcome everybody if you're just joining us i'm gonna wait a couple more minutes foreign so take notes too um hmm this must be a rough month small group tonight [Music] is everybody tired so tired i was like ugh then i was like oh my god i don't even have my materials and my bags left but i was like i'm just going to join and listen well yeah nina welcome i have tried to get to three other different webinars this week and missed every single one and it's been just kind of non-stop so i haven't even had time to prepare so i will be taking notes and and reviewing also for for for making at a later date i think the kids are getting crazy before thanksgiving are you finding that in your schools too our kids have been crazy since day one well yes just just more worse more crazy since they don't know how to act no they really don't i'm in a high school we had a fight the first day oh my god the third day we had what they call a may day the fights there are so many they had to call for backup please oh my gosh and then yesterday the same thing we had to go on lockdown the fights were i think there was full six fights throughout the day that's crazy and um the lockdown was because the first fight was cousins so then all the parents and aunts and uncles showed up in the office and they were screaming and yelling so they had to lock down the whole school oh lord i was at home and my phone was blowing up i'm like well this is good i'm not there oh my god we had a fight today in our building and one of our wonderful teachers tried to jump in and break up the fight and she got knocked out and had to go to the hospital so now i got an email earlier this evening that we're having an emergency union meeting to go over i guess protocols and whatnot um on what what we should and shouldn't do when something like this happens i guess to protect ourselves so i have to run off of this meeting to go to that one it's just the party's never ending this year it's it's well we don't have a union you don't no not virginia did not know that and um our stance is you have to tell them to stop and you have to call for help that's all you have to do well that's what most of us would do anyway uh some of us would try to jump in and break it up just because it's our natural inclination but i'm kind of at that age where it's like no i'm kind of done with that stuff i don't want to get hurt and um it's not my problem well we then we've had a cop get a concussion a cop with a broken arm a teacher that had to get total knee replacement another teacher that had knee surgery unbelievable yeah we had a in an elementary school the principal got beat up well we have a principal by a fifth grader yep wow well it's a regional program which is kids uh who are emotionally disturbed you know have emotional issues but and they're housed in it's a program that's throughout howard county and you know typically there there the program works great but um i've found that as the year has gone on there is some angrier and angrier kids who come in and more violent they have no concern for property for i mean this is elementary you know i mean kindergartens haven't heard words like this and they're running through with these vulgar words it's sad it's a pitiful state they're smoking pot at school every day and according to the police when they bust them at school the courts just put them in a one-hour drug program and let them go one hour oh great oh bonus they don't they don't get any punishment god you know i keep saying i joke around with my colleagues that maybe they should just install a gummy vending machine for the teachers so we could all just be high and there's no problems you know we're all happy at the same time how did kids start a fire in my room oh my god last week um that's crazy they took them out of one of my classes i had them i had them twice it was deemed that his adhd was the reason he started the fire so he got to come back to school in two days well of course that's what they would say to get him back in the building we've had fights every day every day i'm at a high school in las vegas nevada we've never we've all had occasional fights but not never like this every day there's every day how many staff absences do you guys have a day i'm curious oh a lot 20. well we have well i say 20 we probably have over 10 unfilled really it was half we always have like anywhere from five to ten that people are in elementary schools they're out and then at least five you know that are unfilled and then we have to take some planning time and to fill it in if they you know because they're calling us up well do you have this time i'm like what about prepping for these classes i can't that's my prep time i can't who's going to get the material ready for these kids was a social emotional learning program so yesterday they extended that program cut all the other classes short extended the social emotional stuff which all got cut short because we were on lockdown because the fights are so violent and i'm like i think y'all need to put your resources somewhere else then trying to talk to these kids about social emotional stuff because they don't know how to act now and then they're pushing ap now and they're like these kids i've half my kids read at a third grade level and they want us to push ap everywhere i don't know how you teach any content when discipline takes more than half of your pro your time with each class there's just no way it's like i'm so exhausted from just trying to get the kids under control to listen that by the time i do that there's 10 minutes left to do anything and then it's wrap up and clean up and move on and and they don't remember anything from one day to the next it's just i spent an hour of my planning period today oh my gosh not for every day i have six in one day oh well we're on a block so at least they got that right i need it on odd days i have i was at that threes and fours and five and i have an art one and then i have duty on even days i have two stacks ceramic ones and twos and a craft class okay and then my planning wow and then and then once a week i have sel we have to work that into our all of our stuff one way or the other another yesterday it was my principal's turn to have the school visited by um our superintendent's office so she came around and she was like please do you know something she told me i was on the list to be visited i'm gonna be visited the second classroom of the day make sure it's focused on sel and um questioning and this and that and the other and so you know i told the kids this is what's happening we're gonna put on a show let them all see what they want to see please don't embarrass me and they pulled it off and the very next day it was like back to normal mayhem it's like if you can do this for like for this person so we don't all look like crazy people why can't you do it on on a daily basis i just don't understand i don't get it there's nothing better than a seventh period art one that is ninety percent ninth grade boys oh wow off the wall right completely off the wall i think we should get started fair warning this is being recorded [Applause] uh welcome everybody and i'm so happy to be able to tell you that we have dawn is it boss or bass bass this evening master quilt genius and and and creative person teacher and artist and all around just inspiration because i see her stuff all the time on facebook excuse me and um as as i tell you guys all the time i stalk only the best on facebook to to get them to share their their fabulousness with us and even with a cold or a severe bronchial thing um i'm so happy that you are here with us so i'm going to hand it over to dawn and i hope you guys all enjoyed this session where did you go here you are um [Music] spotlight you for everybody here we go all right awesome there you go wow i'm gonna quickly go through some of my examples um unfortunately a lot of them or fortunately i sold a whole lot at the conference so i'm just now remaking and some of these didn't sell so i have a bunch of the ladies um this is all done collage just like you would do with paper except for a used fabric um i kind of free form it i can tell this is one of the earlier ones because she has the eyeliner and then i started getting just a little more comical in these if you put glasses on them it's like the last thing you do but i'll get into that later i did a lot of flowers they they're very popular i've shown you the different styles on how easy it's put together again it's just collage and i just i'm just cutting out pebble shapes and then basically gluing them together this one's in a vase i don't want to pull the camera back too much because then i won't get it close enough again um these are your cone flowers in a field these are my poppies and so that is pretty much just a selection of what i've what i've done i started a smaller flower one today just to get you show you the basic steps um you can i when i do one with the table i just stitch the pieces together first this i put the webbing on the back and it's got a paper base um and then i cut it out and pull it off of course you know like it's almost like everything you put down your background first and then i've i've ironed on my leaves i've haven't i deliberately don't iron all the way to the edge sometimes because when sometimes i like to fold them back and then when i'm finished um binding it i i have some break the plane so um that's why this is loose because i'm probably going to break the plane on some of these so then all i would do is you know again i cut up these real quick they have the stuff on them i would arrange it peel the paper off when i get it the way i want it i probably want to bring this down to cover up this and then i peel off the back and press it and i'll work on that later on um my little poppy again i'll probably put him up here so um i have a little iron and i have a big one so again i just peeled off the stuff you can see the glue um i don't use the same iron for clothes as i do for this but oh that's so cute it's a tiny little thing yeah unfortunately they cost more than the big ones but of course but it's so handy especially when i'm doing stuff so um sometimes the i don't have the stuff go all the way the ends you know like this one still curls up but i don't worry with it because i'm going i i free motion quilt over the entire thing um i also buy and of course i touch the iron to this i also buy the hem tape sometimes because it's the last minute i say oh i need to add something and if there's no paper on it you can just kind of peel and stick this to hold it in place because that's basically all you're doing is like i can just put a little piece here and press it to hold that in place long enough to stitch it i have used a glue stick they sell a glue stick for fabric um but honestly i think it's the exact same thing as a regular glue stick and only use that if you're just tacking something and you plan on stitching if you're never going to stitch you got to make sure that your paper covers the whole back so like i said i always stitch on top of it so this fusing is just to keep it in place while i work is your is your background one piece with the other with the table pasted on top of this on this one i stitched it oh okay okay got it sometimes i don't and sometimes when i'm doing these i just have blocks of color and i leave the inside white i mean undone just because you cover up most of it anyway but i do that more with the faces so here's my background i do have my stuff here because i'm going to show you what i end up doing um so this is ready to go this is a little more busy than i usually do my faces but i'm going to try something new so i'm going to cut out my head and again it doesn't have to be perfect because by the time you put hair and everything on it you want it symmetrical you know that you can fold it so here's my head now before i iron it on and if i don't if i'm worried that you're going to see through the face through the background this one i'm not too worried about but what i do is i this pen i've never found it in the store i get it online i'll show you the magic trick it does in a minute but you can use chalk or anything so what i usually i do a lot of times is i cut out this head just so you won't see the background through the face there's a lot of times your face is a lighter color not always tracy's asking what's the name of the iron this one is a drip so i got it at like joanne fabric okay if you go d-r-i-t-z if you go to um amazon you can probably find other brands um so this might be a time i use my binding do you ever draw your stuff out first or you just just free form it or sometimes i do um and that's where this you can either draw it on the back i've gotten to the point where i free-form it a lot of times okay because these i did a dog not too long ago so i did make a pattern on paper and i did more drawing than i usually do so since i'm working on the webbing and i need this to start kind of stay in place that's where i use that hem stuff just to keep my background in place and then now when i peel this off it's going to stick to my webbing or my filler but let me show you what this pen does it completely disappears with heat oh magic and what's the name of that pen i got on amazon and i said heat erasable pen and it came up i went to the quilting store and they didn't have it they only had water removal so i made a little mistake if you make a mistake on this some you can usually peel it apart sometimes it peels apart better warm but i forgot my neck so um when you move up you're you're um yeah we're missing there we go yeah so um i'm just gonna and again my neck might have shoulders if she's gonna have something strapless or i might um i might just build the shoulder separate so there's my neck i peel off my paper what kind of fabric is that with the backing like you have fabric that already has a backing oh i already own on the stuff so i use the um so you're adding it as adhesive to all the fabric yeah i do it um this is the the wonder under or heat bond or something like that i use light or feather light because it's just to hold it in place it's not going to be permanent without stitching so what i do as you can see is i pre-iron a bunch of it on my fabrics okay only time i would use this or glue is if i cut something small at the last minute and i just need to hold it in place until i get to something so you can see it's got a sheen on it and that's the glue because when you just peel off the paper you iron on the paper and it then when you peel it off you have your iron-on adhesive okay can you just use this would you recommend like for middle school kids who are not always well behaved i wouldn't want to use an iron or anything can't we just use glue just to you can use glue but unless they're stitching it's not going to be permanent so i was telling somebody earlier i'm going to use do this with scrapbook and paste paper later on with my crafts kids and just use glue and mod podge okay is what you're saying um not if well my high schoolers i would let them use the iron okay but as an alternative i would use paper i think if you used like a white glue it would seep through your fabric gonna seep through your um glue stick isn't gonna be um permanent now you could do you could use modge podge and it's going to be stiff and you can't stitch it or i can pitch it i like the idea of the collage with fabric that's something i'm really interested in doing and and the good thing with that is you have so much more options of fabric than you do of paper yeah um but yeah you could collage it like basic paper collage with fabric in mod podge okay mod podge would seal it at the end it would seal it and you wouldn't have to do the iron on and i would do the iron that would be a whole other safety issue well i've done the iron on we've done story quilts i've done it with my crafts kids that was not the problem they were pretty good with it however um they aren't real good i do have a ruined iron board cover where they didn't always use a transfer or you see i'm not using a piece of i usually give them newsprint to put between the iron and their fabric so they don't hit the fabric with the iron or the glue with the iron and somehow they still do or they accidentally glue the wrong side or they accidentally iron it to the ironing board so um yeah accidents definitely happen yeah what about what about um adhesive backing that you don't need to iron would that be something that you could recommend you would recommend like um i used it for something before it's like a sticky backing and if you put the fabric on that and then let the kids cut it out and use it that would work that would work for the first layer but after a while you would be fabric on fabric oh okay right that you guys cause as soon as i find my white that i got out for my eyeball which well i like the idea of what you're doing i love what you're doing actually so i think i would love to try it but i would probably just be more after maybe doing since you're layering a lot i would just maybe just rely on the mod podge to hold it all together thank you there's a lot of um collage paper now that kind of looks like fabric that you could do if you didn't want to do um the fabric i want the tactile feel of that fabric right once you um use the modge podge it does kind of look like feel like paper paper um i have done i did do when we did the story quilt they glued the images with the um with the this on the panel and that was fine for what they were doing um but they didn't stitch on top of it so it will work it's just not super super permanent and another thing that we did is if you do it on white fabric it's thin enough that they put it like they had to do a hero theme so they could trace with a sharpie on the white fabric the the portrait that they were doing to put on their quilt and their pieces so it kind of worked for that um but they did use a sewing machine for that but only for the the edges everything in the panel was either drawn painted or fused on and it worked so when you said they traced their portraits so they drew their portraits on paper and then they how did they trace it on like like a graphite method or i don't know um actually uh cheap white fabric on this bonding stuff if they put it on the screen of their laptops oh yeah right through it okay so did they so with that lesson you didn't teach them how to draw the proportions of the face they just was it something that they used a photograph of and then they use that is it like do a contour line drawing of that yeah um it was it's my crafts class and they do not have to have art one to get into crafts okay so these kids may have never had drawing okay and i'm about i and you know crafts were more about the process than we are about the art talent i guess is you know what i'm saying so i don't want to get bogged down with them being frustrated that it doesn't look like mark yeah yeah no i agree i would i would probably because that's a big undertaking to do um you know uh self-portraits and trying to get the proportions right so i don't know if i would even do that as well i might just do like the contour line drawing oh yeah and just let it be a representation of them and not like a realistic um you know rendition of who they are dawn can you tell us again what is underneath the base fabric was it um this is this your um quilt binding now if you're not that's the best yeah okay okay what's it called yeah cotton batting um and you don't need to use this if you're not gonna quilt it you know if your students aren't gonna free motion quilt it like you can see on the back where i i stitched her hair and eyes with black um everything else was white but the whole thing you know has been stitched it's so hard to pick up on this the whole thing has been stitched so the um you know like some pieces like this i don't even glue down because they're one of the last things i put on and i can hold it in place while i stitch it but if you're not going to stitch it you've got to really make sure that you know like this this isn't ironed all the way down but i'm not worried because i'm gonna be putting hair and everything on and that'll hold it in place so i guess i'm gonna give her green eyes now i do sometimes depending you know i'm trying to say what size eyeballs do i want sometimes i use this but usually again i just freestyle it and you know i keep you know i keep it simple almost cartoonish so it doesn't have to be perfect yeah and again it's just the layers so i put my eyeballs i on even wrap my brain around the free style sewing um machine sewing i don't i i'm terrified of a sewing machine um um well my mom taught me to sew when i was 10 and i am now in my 60s i used to make all my clothes but i didn't free motion quilt until maybe 10 years ago when i took a graduate fiber class this is my favorite fabric for pupils because i get my highlight built in it might not be in the right place but i get my little white spark love that and it's a really easy fabric to find anywhere another hint is if you're cutting small pieces and i'll show you that when i'm doing eyelashes um it's easier you should always peel your paper off before you cut them too small or you're going to be doing what i'm doing right here fighting it sometimes to separate it and of course this one's probably needs to be pressed again there we got it [Music] perfect and i don't always give my eyes the same color i definitely don't do the same color eyeshadow on each eye and sometimes this is where um oh there's my scrap i had aside from my eyeball and of course i picked up the one piece without stuff on it so let me get another piece so what i do a lot of times when i'm doing my eyelid is i find a scrap that has a curve in it i mark with my fingernail or my pen cut out that eyelid and again you know changing i've seen people that do real round eyes and you know they look a little more animated and this is one of those times when i this i grab the glue stick or piece of the bonding because there wasn't any stuff here and rather than stop and iron on a whole sheet of stuff i use the glue stick or the other stuff to put it there and i literally have bags of small scraps somewhat sorted by color and then of course i have the stash behind me i wish we could see your stash i'm embarrassed to show you how bad it looks in here it doesn't matter man dash is gold tracy would like to know how many class periods does it take to complete this project well i have not i'm gonna do this pro well last year was kind of you know we didn't do anything um i did the story quilt and that was quite a few weeks um i'm going to do this project in paper i think with my craft kids but i'm also thinking about doing it in fabric as landscapes instead of faces because then they can stitch a little on the sewing machine in just straight lines and pretty much hold everything in place um it really depends on their maturity level later on in the year they could get better they could get worse you know how that goes how many selfies do you have um self-contained or ieps uh how many sewing machines oh sewing machines oh i have three okay um i got i think i got two of them from donor's shoes because they're only like a hundred and twenty dollars each are they easy to maintain with kids on and off them all the time um so the way i did it was i had a table with the sewing machines and they were just doing straight lines so i sat with them while they did the first and then most of them they're scared to death of sewing machines yeah like me i'm terrified absolutely terrified um but they all get the hang of it and the funniest thing is is i had this boy we have something called bliss which is one of those behavior modification things and he was a bliss student he was identified as an eighth grader as at risk bounced off the walls but man did he love to sell on a sewing machine so he wanted to sell so everybody's and everybody of course was fine with that because then they didn't have to do it um and he was fine with it you know i'd have to thread them but like i said i've been sewing for so long that wasn't a big deal they didn't they never broke it nobody ever got if you're doing a regular stitch with i mean a regular foot it's nearly impossible to sew your finger because it just doesn't fit um free motion quilting though i've gotten real close yeah um because you can get your finger kind of up there so i'm like i said you saw on this one i peeled the paper off first because i'm doing my eye lashes and i didn't want to fight with the peel and stick um in the small piece that is so cute i have uh two questions okay um the first for the sewing machines how safe or how dangerous is it for um using the sewing machines because i'm interested in it but um i'm also afraid of the sewing machine um i get it i'm terrified i've been sewing again all my life um in the classroom i've used them quite a few times um but i keep it simple like this year um i have a stash of upholstery fabric so they're definitely going to use a sewing machine to make little handbags which is you know three or four seams and a lining or a pillow again three or four seams and a um you know and sew it together and i i'm very confident with that the thing with the story quilt that worked out well was so many people were at different levels you know speeds that they didn't have 30 kids waiting to use three machines at the most i had five or six kids waiting to use three machines so it wasn't that big of a deal when it came to management and i just sat at one table and managed them all and you know it depended on the student if they look like they knew what they do or doing i would back away um but you know some students i wouldn't leave their side i mean you know just like everything you had some students going the whole time like just just you know and it's like throwing on the wheel it's the same thing it's a gas pedal just like you drive the car and you know i said don't go 55 miles an hour just go 25 you'll be fine um and you know god blesses when these kids get their licenses all i could say but you know again i just i use the analogy to driving and you know i used to teach crafts i started the crafts program and then you know when you things turn around and new teachers come in sometimes crafts is the one that gets thrown to the newbies because they think it's a you know an easy class and so i finally got it back i fought for it i finally got it back so again things have changed you know lucky for history teachers history pretty much never changes but art there's always new materials and new artists and new mediums and you know new smart people coming up with things to do so you're always changing you know oh there's glasses i started and if we want to try using a sewing machine um do you think you could send us a link of like like which one would be a good one because i don't know anything about sewing machine whatsoever i'll i'll show you i've got two machines here and i'll show you those in a little bit okay um you need a phd in sewing machine something goes wrong and you have to fix it or well if if you want to just sew in straight lines any machine will work right um and less than like i said if you're doing something like um um landscapes you probably get away with curvy lines and just straight lines i mean you know i mean curvy like wavy but not like spirals if you want to be drawing with the sewing machine you have to be able to drop the feed dogs which are the little tracks see that's a whole other language you're speaking yeah and i'll show you that in a minute but um that's the big difference is you've got to be able to take the control of the speed away from the machine itself and you do it most machines you can slow down and speed up the um speed of the machine um baby lock i had a i have two big well i have one baby lock in my classroom and they have a school edition it used to be two hundred dollars but i think it's gone up pretty much that one runs a lot slower than my brother's and both of the brothers i have now you can control the speed but if you have somebody like i'd had um he knew how to change the speed and go fast and if that's what thrilled him and he didn't cut him hurt himself then i was okay with it that first nose looked a lot like a penis i had to fix it i have a question about the fabric um is your fabric very thin it's not like thick yeah it's just cotton quilting fabric cotton clothing fabric so i get it at joann you can even the walmarts here sell it in like pre-packaged bundles now um joanne sells it michael sells it in richmond now and then of course you have your quilting stores what you're going to pay more for also there's a company called fabric.com and i used to order from them when i was doing some of you know curtains but i went to them to look at you know during covet and stuff to look at print well when i clicked on the prints it took me to amazon now for a lot of quilting fabrics you are going to pay about 12 a yard at a quilt store um but like i said at walmart you can get three dollar yard pieces and you can get five dollar pieces already cut and and fold it also you can get for 99 fat quarters at walmart or it's probably gone up a little bit um michael's too i think they're fat quarters and pre-folded yeah so you know sometimes i look through there but i you know teaching i've been at my school for 20 years um there's quite a bunch of fabrics where people have donated them like i make right now my craft kids are hand sewing the monster dolls and i make those out of fleece and um somebody brought me a whole bag of it because their mother makes the blankets and she had scraps and not a whole lot that i could use for the doll body but it was you know good for arms and legs and wings and stuff like that there were some pieces that were bigger so depending on your you know resources we also have a store here called scrap rva and i'm sure every city has something like that they people donate their leftover art stuff yeah we have material for the arts and we also have yeah there's a place you know well fabric is great i'm scratching yeah they have a fabric spray i've never made it like you know it always is when i can't come and um you know you can put out the word you know at school we want to do some sewing we'll take your scraps and i've sorted my scraps i have upholstery fabric and a bin i have um cottons and a bin and i have fleeces and a bin so you know they're all used for different things um but you know as i'm working you can see i'm just adding pieces um seeing what works seeing what fits looking at my scraps like you know um i found i was more successful with the lips if i put down the white teeth first for some reason it's a little more forgiving if it doesn't fit right or if all else fails you try and try again um you can get a whole lot more methodical with this if you like take a portrait and put it in photoshop and put it in cut out and then you cut out each one of those patterns and put it together just like um like pattern pieces so then you can get a whole lot more realism and you can do it you know kind of like a pop art would you put the photograph of the porsche i mean you know the portrait on the like would they put the fabric on top of the portrait would you use that as a base um no i would do it more like a puzzle piece type thing where they would trace the photoshop um or print out the photoshop in black and white or even do it in google draw with the where they do the mosaic type pieces yeah yeah and then they can print each layer and use that as a pattern and put it together that way and then you would be a little more close to realism um but something like this you can still enforce the proportions and not really be too wrapped up in photorealism speak you know because it's about expression another thing is i've seen a couple artists that do these um in real picasso-like format so you know they're real mask looking um so that's just another option to go through you know to to use for it yeah like visa butler quilts her quilts are very realistic looking hers are amazing yeah but it's all you know what i like about these is i literally can sit down and put together two or three at a time you know i have like an assembly line um they all look different because you know i might pick up this piece and use it as a lip from one and a cheek and another and an eyelid on another and you know an earring in another how long does the knowing process take well i'm going to show you that i'm really quick with that again so usually when i get to this stage i'm like okay what color hair what color dress and then i really start to you know if i want earrings i want to put some ears down and that kind of stuff and you know my hair like this one i literally one time i got printed different prints of fabric and i ironed the paper to them and then i was on a long car ride and i cut out all these individual flowers wow so this girl i her hair was just these flowers arranged um can you show that again that that one that you just took away with the hair with the flowers wow that's great that's a great this one i just put the flowers in her hair um so cute so and i had one that i actually put a headband and then i made a ribbon to match so she has you know a bow in her hair um sometimes my hair is cut almost like you know just strips and i just lay it sometimes it's longer it's just longer strips and then sometimes i mean i literally sold 50 of these last week so i'm running out um sometimes i cut them into swirls and loops and kind of give them you know hair like like this girl has you know but out of print so it just depends on the look and that type of thing on as to what i do so the previous one you said you did what with the sewing on that one the previous one no no the other one yeah oh this is just longer hair oh just free form cuts and longer hair um none of these those are great none of these are sometimes i have the hair come over this edge a little bit it just depends you know when i'm working on where my mind's going how much space i have and sometimes i do that with the flowers also um this one well here's two more i have um i have done it's hard to see but oh i like the lighthouse landscape so you can see how doing something like this the stitching could be done by machine and students because it's pretty much straight lines as long as you do the landscape part um this sky was all flowers oh my goodness adorable that i'd cut out love it that one that one drove me crazy this one i did a few years ago it's all painted on fabric and then i stitched on top of it so it was one piece of fabric that i painted and then i stitched on top of it so um yeah we're getting i'm gonna show you my sewing machine so um all right hold on [Music] now let's show you what i'm working on so this guy is i started a santa somebody gave me christmas fabric this isn't typically my style but i was like oh wait a minute let's see what i can do so you can see where i've started stitching him um i've done his eyes in black i did his face and white and i'm going to do everything else in red so this machine i bought myself again this is a quilting thing and the basically [Music] so this is not a regular sewing well it is but it has it has quilting features okay i have a regular sewing machine too but the biggest difference is oh got it now it's upside down there it is um the features on a regular the biggest difference in a regular sewing machine and a quilting machine is what they call the throat and that's the distance here and this one even has a longer bed this way but my regular 200 dollar brother has a sliding tray also um so these are these are the feed dogs right here these little gears most machines now have a button that will lower them some of the older machines you have to put a plate on it or some of the cheaper ones and you just put a plate so nothing's there this is your free motion foot it's got a round hole here it's got a spring so that you've got a little bit of leeway in it so it can go up and down if your fabric gets sick okay so that doesn't have feet that's that's the free motion difference right right right so now i'm gonna get real crazy here i'm gonna try to do this with one hand so um i'm gonna put this at a medium high speed and my foot down so all i do is i'm drawing with my thread so and then occasionally i see where i miss the space and i kind of have to go back down to where i missed and then i'm gonna go over to here and sew his shirt on and when i do the backgrounds i just kind of just do these little swirls you can buy all kind of patterns and everything else but i kind of so like i draw you know real sketchy and fluid and contoury so i'm not worrying too much you know this isn't like a professional quilt in that you know it's going on a bed and somebody's judging it this is a drawing with thread to me so i i kind of attack it a little bit differently okay so that's the free motion quilting part the machine that you put on in the chat for 35 does it do that as well yeah no um i would say the regular brother that i have that i used to quilt on all the time i paid like 200 for it okay um this one that i just bought myself um was a thousand oh wow um i had a four thousand dollar bernina in it died so anyway you can see um good lord how come it's funny how you can't get things back in the chat so you can see where i free motion the red and his beard i kind of picked that color for a couple reasons so you could see the stitching um and i would stitch the hole back i have the i have oh i put the backing fabric on it before i started free motion quilting so when i get this all together i put backing on it and stitches um kathleen would like to know the name of the machine you're using um this new one is the paste setter from brother and the other one is just the brother cs6000 and that one i got on amazon for a couple hundred dollars and it worked fine um it's just that i started doing so many what i really like is i have the other machine set up for straight stitching for all my bindings and piecing and this is my free motion also this one has a feature where i have programmed it to stitch my name so i'm like finally signing my work now when it comes to finishing them i don't trim and i use um you know the rotary cut cutter or i've used a paper cutter to trim it and how can i lock down and i don't trim it until i finish all my free motion because your fabric may stretch and and skew a little bit while you're free motioning because you are you know you're basically tacking it down then i just cut my edges then i cut binding strips they're at about an inch and a half i put them on press them over and i hand stitch on the back let me find one that i just did so you can see i've i sewed this up you know wrong sides right sides together i flipped it and then this is all hand stitched in the back um it doesn't you know it's just one of those things i do in front of the tv and i can knock out a bunch of them you do one side i mean you do your sides and then you then you do your tops because you have to you know fold you have to fold in your corner my camera's not very well so you have to fold in your corners now i used to for big quilts i would put in this rod pocket and for really big ones i still do and you have to kind of do that when you're doing the binding and but this is hand stitched down here so then you just put in a rod to hang it you do the wedding huh is that the whip stitch for the back of the binding yeah okay and then somebody showed me this and this is so easy because there's no hand stitching involved is when i'm sewing it together i cut a square let me show you i cut a square i fold the square in a diagonal this is bigger than this one has and then i sew this in when i'm doing the binding now this one's a lot smaller but it makes a little pocket so of course i don't have a dowel rod in here but you get a dowel rod that will fit in there and you can hang it up that way oh that's easy my super small ones sometimes i sew a ring but basically when they're real small they're just going to hang up with the velcro command strips okay or you can even sew velcro and give you know use the command strip on the fl on the wall but you know this thing has no weight to it and the reason you put the rod pocket or the curtain rod in is so it doesn't curl and it it hangs flat but if they're super small you're not going to have that problem anyway right but i have started using this pocket on the back of all of them this one's bigger you can see it better so all you would do is put a dowel rod in here now if they want to hang it on a curtain rod which a bigger one would have to be you can use this on a curtain rod or you can put a dowel or stick in there and put hook and eyes on there so they can hang it like a painting but that's how i finish it now i have done these as trading cards you know the little two and a half and that's another thing you could do them a lot smaller with students as little pieces or many are and then you know they might have more control with the iron and be less of a hassle um and then all i did was the embroidery stitch i mean the zigzag stitch i only i did the trading cards on regular old pieces of felt colored felt and then i just zig zag stitch the seams some of them i fold over and bind but some of them i just stitch and um zigzag stitch the edges so you didn't use batting on the little trading cards it was just felt as the base yep ah that's so if they're super small you don't have to use the batting you can just use regular old felt that makes total sense and that might be a little more manageable for the classroom and hand sewing for those of us right right then if you if you keep them small yeah and i mean you can flowers are super easy they can hand stitch and you can incorporate embroidery into this yes like you could put it together on the fabric and no quilting and then they can do a hand embroidery and that'll help keep the pieces permanently attached right you know if they did a flower tracy's curious about the size of your pieces in general i keep my girls pretty s almost they're almost life-sized i mean what is she i mean she's a little smaller than life-size but some of you know they're oh here's my ruler that looks like 12 by 12-ish this one's close to 12 by 12. yeah um some of my other ones might be skinnier and longer so i just you know i i don't usually start out with the size i see what fits sometimes i've made them bigger and then i end up cropping them just like you would do in real world um my flowers have been this is 18 by probably 20 24. this one that is it's just me this one that's you know in a vase but i started the other one in the vase and i've done them in the vase even smaller okay so this one is a considerably this one's considerably smaller okay here we go um and i'm probably even going to cut some off of the bottom because i think i got too much tablecloth but i could put some flowers or something here you could also do fruit you know a fruit basket or something might be easier for the kids but if you did smaller pieces on felt then or even without felt you could do the hand embroidery like on the flowers you could do running stitch and chain stitch and and french knot in the centers for interest and i've done that i've even um sewn beads into the flowers by hand i mean it's just um a whole nother step um so there's different ways to adapt if you are doing a person i would do all of my free motion quilting before i did glasses because you can't it's just easier to put the glasses on after everything's been done because then you don't have to worry about following lines and stopping in weird places and again i just pick up fabric and cut it out and see what happens and sometimes they don't need glasses and sometimes they do and sometimes they they put glasses on them this is um glittered fake leather that i got in a packet of cricket stuff from and i'm like i would never wear these but it's thin enough that i could sew right through it so um that's how it gave her some bling i mean you could always bling them up with sequins and beads and that kind of stuff for the kids or the kids might like it um like i'm doing the monster dolls and it's weird what some of the kids think like they think it's easier to sew a button on than it is to sew a circle of felt so some of them have button eyes because they think that was easier so in the circle on um so you can make a lot of options with the students is to you know to get their interest and then you know like i said at the end if i think they look plain i you know go through my bag of flowers and say oh does she need a flower in her hair and this is when like if i were to put this flower in her hair i would definitely do it like this and then i would free motion quilt on everything making sure i don't sew my rod pocket together and even have it hang off a little bit just because to break the plane um a couple of them i put you know lace on them and that's caught in the stitch you can't really iron that on but um you can you know like i said i've added bows and that kind of stuff to it too so he says what yeah this is asking about what you did for story quilts and if you have a lesson plan you could share um yeah i think i still have it not on this computer so what i did with them was um i guess it was it was black history month i didn't force the issue but that's where most of them went they had to pick an important person or event in history um so i got you know i got a lot from the ladies at um oh the astronaut what were they they just did the movie a couple years ago um hidden figures yes i got a lot of them um some george washington you know martin luther king malcolm x that kind of stuff um they had to come up with images and make them out of fabric and then fuse them to the white they had a piece of 12x12 panel so they had to fuse that to that and that like i said sometimes i let them trace on a piece of scrap paper fabric the face or or something like that and then they iron that on um i don't this was one of the projects that covet got us i got a lot of them finished but not all of them and then none of them got picked up and then you know it was go home nothing gets put away and then you get three hours to come back and clean your room for a year and um so a lot of them didn't laugh i think i still have a couple in my classroom and then after they finished the white panel i had lots of fabric strips you know cut that were you know this wide all different prints and again they were from scraps that i had if they weren't long enough for the 12 or 14 inches around i seamed them so they're like patchwork almost like african look and i just had lots of strips of fabrics and the students sewed those on with the sewing machine and they did the top and the bottom and then they pressed that open and did this left and the right and that was their only sewing machine part of it and like i said they all did it they all loved it and some of the boys liked it more than the girls um you know student did one square and they would have would they have been sewn together or um i did so four of them together for a black history month show you know we in in our county we submit one piece a month to some shows you know and i submitted one piece from my class but it was actually four pieces put together you know i had landing on the moon you know that was one of the easiest ones because they could make an astronaut and a half circle and put all that together they could paint you know you can paint some of mine are painted fabric um this is painted fabric so if you like what i do a lot of times you just the little craft paints that you get for like a buck or less when they run out i put water in them and i dye fabric with them oh okay so that they're they got some body but they're pretty much soft because they're not painted so and if the kids paint with a lot of a lot of water with acrylic paint they that's like one guy painted is his son because i didn't have yellow fabric or he didn't like the yellow fabric i had so as long as they keep it you know you dilute the paint um they can still press it and you know you can even sew through it because i sew through this on the sewing machine all the time so it was acrylic watered down yeah i just watered down acrylic um i have a lot of the pebo paints that are fabric soft um but like i said i just add water to empty bottles and great idea really great idea you know you get enough out of that to dye some fabrics thinly for that um you know it's kind of like what you do with paste paper you know you take old ends of paint and tools and scraps and re repurpose something um and you know what i end up doing is i get a piece of fabric and i squirt the water down paint and i go like this and it comes out you know this kind of oh it comes out this kind of um almost tied eye look i'm just literally doing this and i wring it out in the sink i'm on a campus school so when i open my door i'm outside so yeah our water grate is painted because i put stuff there to dry and some of our trees are painted because i hang stuff from the limbs to dry um and then i put them in my drying rack the thing is if you put them on your drying rack sometimes you get these neat grid patterns because the paint kind of settles which can work or not work so that's a lot you know and you can what i do like for my iron-on stuff and for my muslim for school is you know i wait till the store has 40 off one cut piece of fabric and i buy the whole bolt when i get it for 40 off that's a good idea too so um that's how i get my fusible webbing i buy a bolt of it and you know i get it for free you must go through a ton of that stuff um actually i'm almost finished the role i bought early spring and i literally had a hundred quilts wow so um between you know a little bit of glue stick here and a little bit of hemi bonding there but it pretty much goes like when i'm doing my flowers i'm not particularly it's worried if if the paper goes all the way to the edge because i'm just tacking it in place till i sew it now if you're doing something with your students then you really want to make sure that and they're not going to be sewing it that you get it all the way to the end and it's going to be permanent enough it's not for for a hanging piece it's not going to fall apart if you put it on a shirt and it goes in the wash eventually it's going to start to fray and fall apart but for a quilted piece or for um a face like i was started um it'll be fine it's just make sure that you don't have frayed edges and another thing that i i learned the hard way is like when we're doing we're doing the monster dolls i pre-cut all the bodies on the paper cutter you can cut fleece on a paper cutter blanket fleece into like eight by ten twelve uh eight by ten pieces because they made their pattern from a piece of copy paper okay but when it came to those felt squares for the eyes and the nose and all that i cut i used to put out felt the big nine by 12 felt squares i don't understand the logic that if you have something like this and you want an eyeball that you cut it out of the middle yeah and waste the whole piece he knows but what i do is nothing is bigger than this i cut every piece of felt this size yeah i have a stash of felt in the back so if they want to make a dress or they want to make a wing then i'll cut them a bigger piece yes but i stopped giving them a felt square they also i would do the same thing with this yeah if if they were doing flowers i would and i worked that way anyway they would get a strip like this of a couple colors of blue all pressed and ready to go again your paper cutter will cut this especially if it's already been fused to the paper so you can easily put stuff like this this whole piece has been done almost and then take it to the paper cutter and cut it into smaller pieces oh that makes sense kids won't waste it and then you get boxes like this or ziploc bags and you can sort your pieces that way and what i did this year is you know those little totes um they're they're scissors they're felt squares whatever color threads they are using are all in there we label them by table and that's their stash i have a stash at my desk but i tell them if you want this paint for your lips keep it in your stack because like i had a girl that found this one piece of orange and she cut out three eyes and then she accidentally cut one eye in half or somebody used it and i was like all right i'll get you some more orange and i looked at it i said this is not an orange i have ever seen and i remember it i ordered that felt on amazon in a pack so i went in my history and i ordered a new pack and there's one piece of orange there's you know 40 colors like this but there's that one orange in there but it's not like i'm not going to use it and sometimes you find these on sale yes they're pretty expensive but if you find them on sale or you find them at a place these are perfect sizes for flower petals and for binding or stripping if that's what you're going to do so those are just some of the savers to use them in class i wish i could do a cup of tea dawn i know i got my simba court now butter all in the house i'll be doing that shortly and then the parade zone will kick in and i'll be up again at three in the morning wide awake wow thank you so much for you know sacrificing your your evening for us and and sharing this this has been really wonderful i so many ideas and materials and i had completely forgotten that i have one of your little quintet quilted atc cards oh yeah i've done a few one or two of them were actually bound but a lot of them weren't i have some bouncing around in my head now [Music] did you show any of those uh trading cards that you were telling telling us about mine or at school i might be able to show the one that that dawn made that i have well here's um the one i did oh nice that i didn't finish because i lost it you know i when i do that trading cards i make like eight because sometimes i give one to cheryl or you know i just in case one screws up and i thought i made eight the last time and then i could only find seven and then like three weeks later i found the unfinished one so all i did to these was zigzag around the edge and this isn't even felt this is a piece of old upholstery fabric oh yeah you got you got one of my early ones that i actually bound yes i think i have your leaf also the one you just showed us and all this was scraps um scraps with the iron on stuff already on it yeah and i just ironed it and then cut it out is your leaf and then i i free motion quilted my veins and zigzagged my edges i love it and the back of it feels like um it's just a piece of upholstery it feels suede yeah it's upholstery suede these are some that i made a pillow out of years ago and there i found a scraps and i'm like oh this is good it's great so um but yeah if you work smaller with the students you could incorporate sewing with embroidery on these you can do the whole thing with the iron on um as long as the whole thing is attached to the glue and it'll stay together um it's not going to fall apart and you can even frame them on stretcher strips you don't have to you know and for art shows you can mat them just like paper you know if you want it to brazil they can be framed and put in match oh everybody's leaving thank you guys for coming again thank you so much don i hope you feel better soon good good health vibes and and and loving hugs thank you thank you thank you it was awesome tonight i'm glad none of you all started a fire while i was doing this [Laughter] i stomped out one of course it was a day i i the first day i wore like a heel a suede shoe to school and i'm thinking oh god here's my shoes all right i will if anybody wants to re-watch this i will be posting it by the weekend on our nikata uft um youtube channel i almost short circuited again um and uh we have our next session will be in two weeks uh lee darter is gonna be doing a session for us of scrappy animals oh yeah those are awesome so i'm looking forward to that have a wonderful evening everybody happy happy happy thanksgiving um and and feel better dawn okay all right bye good night thank you good night everybody thank you dawn have some tea with that for that co-op all right good night steph thank you

Channel: NYCATA UFT

Views: 849

Keywords:

Id: _CNN_XYBMnQ

Length: 96min 24sec (5784 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 21 2021