The Endeavourers Reveal Day: Collage

I am part of an online art quilt group, The Endeavourers.  We have quarterly design themes, and it is always fun to see how each person interprets the theme. 

This quarter the theme was “Collage.”  I love collage, and I would say all the art quilts I have made for this group have some collage elements — for example, painted areas, three-dimensional pieces, and non-fabric embellishments.  So I wanted to push a little further in all those directions, and as always, I wanted to experiment with some new-to-me techniques.

But where to start?  I decided to stick with the easy* subject matter of flowers, and then, to choose a composition, I pulled out some collages I have done in art journals:

I make these with as intuitively as possible, without planning.  Once I looked at them together, I noticed that I tend to go with a very blobby background and a limited color palette.  Then I put a focal point toward the bottom of the right hand side, and then surround it with various images and textures that feel related.

I thought this fabric (part of the Studio Art Quilt Association collection in 2017) would be a good foundation for the piece:

I picked up this fabric in a SAQA collection in 2017.

I started playing with techniques to create some flower accompaniments:

These flowers were done with free-motion embroidery.

On the right is a colored pencil study of an iris, on the left is the same flower on an old cotton napkin, colored with fabric crayons and stitched.

I worked on it a little each day for about two weeks, and here is the finished piece:

Bountiful Bouquet, made for The Endeavourers’ “Collage” challenge.

On all of these art quilts, value is a challenge for me.  On a piece like this with strongly contrasting areas, it is a challenge to integrate the areas and make the whole feel cohesive.  But on earlier pieces, like this one, where I stuck to a high-key value range, I feel like the piece gets washed out, and it is hard for the eye to find a path.

Some of the techniques I tried were not for me, like thread lace done on water-soluble stabilizer — I didn’t like the feel of it.  But I was very happy with some of my experiments, especially adding a layer of pattern by ironing on some very old cross-stitch pattern transfers.  Here are some of my favorite details:

Bobbin work, French knots, stenciling.

Lumiere textile paints for the large flower, with a ribbon flower center; 80-year-old cross stitch transfer, vintage crochet motif.

Free-motion embroidery on cotton and Lutradur, vintage tatted edge.

Vintage embroidery and buttons.

 

Techniques and new materials used in this piece:

  • thread sketching
  • machine wrapped yarns
  • couching
  • textile paints
  • textile crayons
  • free motion quilting
  • stenciling
  • stamping
  • yo-yos

Vintage materials:

  • embroidery
  • crochet
  • tatting
  • hem-stitched napkins
  • iron-on embroidery transfer
  • needlelace

As always, I enjoyed the process of working on this piece, and especially being able to use some of the vintage scraps and samples that show up in my auction hauls and roadside rescues.  The work of at least six other makers is collected here, and who knows how many different designers!  I hope to be able to add more layers and details in the future.  I hope you will hop on over to The Endeavourers for a dose of collage inspiration!

*easy for someone with huge collection of vintage linens that I have, anyway.  🙂

Category : Embroidery, Endeavourers
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