Monday, September 20, 2010

Stripes and Texture

In my previous post I talked about stripes. Here's what I did to jazz up the stripes. I roughly cut up a bunch of "squares" and pinned them to a background fabric in an alternating pattern. This red background fabric, by the way, is a really pretty quality cotton that I bought for a couple of dollars at the thrift store. I thought it would make a nice top. When I got it home and unbundled it, I discovered a huge tear in the middle.

I sewed the "squares" to the background by hand, using very messy stitches and to add to the mess, the fabric being a loose weave, started to unravel. The more I handled it, the worse it got so I had to use some Modge Podge around the edges to halt the damage.

Even though it's a big wonderful mess in the middle (let's call it texture :) ) the neat part of me had to make a clean finish around the outside edges. I added a few snippets of the red fabric for additional interest.



















The result:

4 comments:

Healing Woman said...

She turned out great! I love the weave you created and never thought of using Modge Podge to stop fabric from unraveling. Thanks so much for the tip.

Creativehands said...

OH! She is wonderful! Thanks for the work in progress shot; it's a great work of art.

Summerset said...

Nice texture. You can use a product called Misty Fuse underneath the pieces to fuse it all together and to another thin piece of fabric, even the backing. I like the fact the the fabric frayed a bit - more like fur. There is an article in the current issue of Quilting Arts in which the artist uses woven strips of fabric to create quilts - neat technique.

Judy Merrill-Smith said...

Love the texture and her eyes!