Geri deGruy's blog of art, musings, and inspiration

The garbage was full of scraps. Suddenly I couldn't bear to throw out all those small pieces of fabric. I dredged out a pile of the blues, ironed the rumpled dears and a new piece of fabric began.

To start, I cut a piece of medium weight muslin. It helps if the base fabric has some substance when you begin to sew. If using a light fabric, add a stabilizer to the back before beginning.

On top of the muslin I added a loose piece of Mistyfuse, a very fine fusible web. I started layering the many scraps I had rescued. When the muslin was covered, I put the piece between 2 pieces of parchment paper and ironed it to make the pieces stick. Since there was a lot of overlap, some pieces didn't stick as well as others. Mistyfuse is like a tissue to rip, actually easier than that, so I just ripped tiny pieces of it to put under the fabric that wasn't stuck down and ironed. 

2 lessons I learned here. 

1. For the initial process, it would have been easier to have Wonder-Under or Steam-a-Seam attached to the base fabric. The Mistyfuse was loose which made it a bit harder to keep fabric in place. Then I could have used Mistyfuse for the loose pieces.

2. It would have been MUCH better if I had assembled this ON the ironing board! With all of it loose, the transfer to ironing board was rather a mess. 

OK, then I added more pieces to fill out the muslin, overlapping as I proceeded. I laid most the the pieces parallel but put in the occasional odd piece on end or perpendicular to the rest. If you use a colorful and/or patterned fabric as you base, you may not want to cover the entire piece with scraps but instead leave spots where you can see through to your base.

Next was sewing. This was a totally random process. I used a number of different color threads, using mostly shiny rayon embroidery threads.

Straight stitch, fancy stitches, whatever struck my fancy. I tried to make sure every piece was stabilized by stitching.

I made a braid of sorts by picking 3 yarns that coordinated color-wise, rolled them together and simply sewed that on with the largest zig-zag stitch on my machine. You just keep rolling the yarns as you go. If that makes you uncomfortable, you can braid the yarns first and then sew them on.

Finally I scrunched a piece of turqoise tulle onto the piece very irregularly and sewed that on. Add a large blue safety pin and here's a new piece of interesting fabric!

WHAT WOULD I DO WITH THIS?  you ask. 

Anything your sweet heart desires. You can use it as:

-an art piece in itself, perhaps further embellished, lettered, gilded, buttoned... Or frame it as is and hang the lovely thing.

-a book or journal cover.

-pages for a fabric book.

-wrapping "paper".

-another fabric for a quilt or art project.

-a background.

-the centerpiece of a quilt, surrounded by the fabrics in the piece.

-a placemat.

-the front of a pillow.

and on and on.

This is a fun recycling project and you end up with a unique, wonderful piece using scraps from other projects.

More to come!