Fabric Scrappy Canvas for Altered Eclectics

And now for something completely different! Well maybe not completely, but it's been a while since I shared anything sewing based.

I have got rather a lot of fabric hidden (I mean stored) away, and often when you make something with fabrics there are bits left over.

Wanting to do something that felt a bit cheery and springlike, I decided to raid my leftover fabric stash, to cover a thin canvas board I had.

I grabbed a random selection of offcuts which I then arranged over a sheet of Heat & Bond (hard to describe - but it's essentially a paper based glue for fabric that is heat activated). Once I was happy with the layout I then pressed over it with an iron - at this point it's best to place a thin cloth over the piece so that none of the glue ends up stuck on the base plate of the iron - if it did it would most likely ruin it!

The next stage is to take it over to the sewing machine - all the scraps will be held in place by the heat and bond so you shouldn't lose any on the way! I chose to use a variety of my machine's stitches and different brightly coloured threads to edge each of the scraps. Where they overlapped, I stitched up to the next piece of fabric to make it look like the stitches carried on underneath.

I then wanted to add a sentiment, so I chose a SuziQ one and stamped it using standard black Archival ink onto a piece of plain calico. I did a bit of research online to see which inks were recommended, some people seem to prefer Stazon, but I did find one link to a blog where she had used about 10 different ink pads, and then ironed and washed them. (if I can find the link again, I'll pop back and add it here). The Archival came out as well as any of the others so I went with that. I also added a little colour using Zig fabric markers which are permanent once ironed.   I then stitched this into place by again stitched round it.

I then placed the whole piece on a sheet of pelmet vilene interfacing) and sewed all the way around the randomly shaped top piece using a zig-zag stitch. Once I'd done this, I trimmed the vilene back to the stitched edge, and using pva glue attached it to the canvas board.

I'm really happy with this piece of fabric art, just looking at it makes me smile.

Thanks for reading
Steffi :o)
Xx