I really want to develop my skills in fabric collage. My first collage was my spiral, Spinning Flora and Fauna. I was going to tell you to view my blog about it, but I must have only done that blog post in my dreams! Sometimes!y my dreams seem so real. Anyway there are blog posts about it. See Empty Spools Seminars: Day 6 https://wordpress.com/post/frommysewingroom.wordpress.com/405 You can also view Day 5, Day 4, Day 3, and Days 1 & 2. Below is Spinning Flora and Fauna, which is in the permanent collection of the Rancho Cordova Public Library.
Research: I started with Susan Carlson’s Beta Duo pattern. Susan talks about telling a story with her quilts. Research helped me learn the story to tell. My betas have bigger tails and fins that her pattern because as I did my research on beta fish, I found they are bred in an incredible array of colors. Just Google images of them. I found one which had a blue body and a yellow tail and visa versa so I went with that idea. I think it goes well with the yin yang idea. I also researched betas in the wild. They live in rice paddies in Asia. They are not nearly as colorful in the wild. I chose the green background by because it reminds me of the green fields of rice. I chose the diagonally striped binding because it continues the swirly motion of the fish. I also found that when mating betas swim around each other in this fashion, so even though these two are definitely males (the more ornate of the breed) I entitled it EImbrace.
Construction: First choose a palette of colors. Cut into small “hand size” pieces. (shown in lower right corner)
Draw the design on muslin and start to pin fabrics on.
The image begins to appear.
It is messy and exhausting work!
The first background is made and ready to cut into the circle.
After much deliberation of what fabrics to use for the background, a green was chosen to reflect the rice paddies where betas live in the wild. In the photo below you will see safety pins. They are there to keep the three layers; top, batting, and backing together while quilting.
Now is the time to step back a bit and figure out what kind of quilting I want to do before I start on the real thing. I make a small sample and try out some threads and quilt designs.
Below is a picture of a clear echo foot I used to do the quilting. Because not all the small fabric edges are thoroughly glued down, I use this foot which glides over them with ease.
After the quilting is done, it is squared up and the binding is added. Now it is finished. See top photo.
Display: Embrace is currently hanging in the foyer at my church, Parkside Community Church. https://www.parksideucc.org/ You can see it any Sunday through Nov. 21, 2021.
From My Sewing Room 