Collaged Backgrounds - Finale!

To finish up my month of fabric collage blog posts here, I’ll go through my process for making these collaged backgrounds work for me.

I almost always paint the stitched collage with fabric paint to unify the piece. My choices of light, medium, and dark fabrics start to matter more here. My favorite paints are the Prochem textile paints diluted with the white extender. Sometime I use an old credit card, sometimes a brush.

However, if I don’t have the color I need, I use an acrylic in my collection with the additive to make these paints more textile-friendly.

I might add more white paint to this background, maybe in a pattern, like circles, lines, etc.

After painting, I often do more stitching.

And sometimes, I add sheer fabric, especially organza, in whatever colors are needed - greys, white, black, even green. The sheers can add depth by pushing back a section of image that you want to de-emphasize. Or they can just add a subtle design element.

Thanks for your comments during my month as a Fire blog blogger! And I hope you'll excuse that I didn't keep up the normal quick tempo of this great site. My Mega Move has been pretty intense! (See my blog for some details :-)