Fabric Collage Play

Sorry to say I’ve fallen behind in my blogging, but I’ve been very busy having fun! In November, I attended a Fabric Collage workshop at the Kingston Seniors’ Centre https://seniorskingston.ca/ and it has given me a fun new obsession. The workshop was presented by Linda Coulter, a local fibre artist who specializes in collage https://www.lindacoultertextileart.com/

Fabric collage seems to be a perfect combination for me. You can use every scrap and piece of fabric, thread or bobble that you already have in your stash; you can have a lot of fun cutting and laying out pieces to build your design from either your imagination or your favourite photos; and, after tacking everything together, you can secure and ‘paint’ the piece with lots of hand sewing.

At the workshop, we each chose a prepared bundle of fabrics that provided a foundation or ‘ground’ fabric and a mix of cotton in compatible colours, different scales and different values. Who doesn’t love to get a little bundle of fabrics? Let the fun begin!

Linda provided a great balance of instruction, guidance and freedom to appeal to participants ranging from debutants to those more experienced with design and fabric construction. The introductory lesson was a good refresher for me to consider pattern, scale, colour value, movement, light/dark and focal point.

My bundle had an overall warm-toned assortment of yellows and oranges that are not my usual preferred colour palette, but I decided to roll with it and experiment. I used my bundle of fabrics for inspiration and began to lay out a base that would show some depth. I used a variety of scales to create a foreground and background. The instructor had brought a mountain of other fabrics from her stash and we were encouraged to hunt for any bits that we needed for our design. This was pure, unfiltered fun.

While cutting, layering, and adjusting our collages we kept stepping back to view the design from different angles for overall effect. This is very useful to know when to add or take away pieces, to achieve balance, movement, and a focal point. Once satisfied, the next step was to pin and baste all of the pieces onto the ground fabric. Not to worry though, basting can be removed, and pieces could still be shuffled around or changed at any point (the benefit of not using any glue)!

That is as far as we got in the short workshop. We bundled up our work to take home where, as Linda advised, we let it sit for a bit looking at it from different angles and distances before finalizing it. Then my favorite part, the hand sewing. I love to hold the fabric in my hands and add stitching with coloured threads to adhere the pieces to the collage, and to highlight any detail. To me, this is a bit like mess-free painting that can always be picked out and changed to correct mistakes.

I did try not to make a landscape, but it seemed to migrate in that direction. It’s reminiscent of a forest gone to swamp land, as I see so often on my country walks in the countryside north of Kingston. My focal point–as is very plain to see–was the gorgeous bright flower cut from a larger fabric piece. Have I mentioned how much I love flowers? If you look closely while out in nature, no matter how bleak a landscape may seem from a distance, there is almost always at least one flower to be found. In this piece, I flipped the narrative–as one can do in collage–by making the swampland retreat to the background allowing the larger-than-life flower to dominate. I finished the piece with a border of muted, moss-coloured faux suede to tie into the imagined landscape and highlight the brightness of the flower.

Having tried my first collage guided by fabrics and imagination, I decided to try the next one using a favorite photo for inspiration. You know I love flowers… I chose this photo of a dandelion gone to seed because of the beautiful texture of the seed globe. As it turns out, you will see that the dandelion becomes my oversize focal point and I take great liberty in imagining the background setting in which it can be found. Maybe there is a theme developing here of letting flowers shine in their environments…

It was time to dive into my stash and choose fabrics that would create the background and setting for a dandelion star. I was intrigued with how I might show the texture of the fluffy seeds and considered using strands of white mohair, but decided to keep with cotton thread and stitch technique to avoid letting the piece become too busy. I used a variety of scale and pattern all in the same bright palette, to build a pastural scene fading off to woodlands, hills and sky. It was great fun to experiment with the adhering stitches, varying style and colour to alternately blend into or define the background.

Fair to say I am now hooked on fabric collage and will add it into my long list of other fibre-based obsessions. I can’t wait to create more using my photos, fabrics I print and dye, hand sewing and free-motion machine stitching….if only there were more time in a day!