Ta Dah!

So if you saw Wednesday's post, you know that I had a bag of about 30 tiny fabric collages to work on in the car. Was hand embroidery really going to do much for them? I just started in without overthinking , and soon I was loving the challenge of figuring out the right colors and combinations of stitches to make each little rectangle really pop.

 

 I finished embroidering all of them before our trip was half finished and started finding other things to embroider.  I was addicted by then!

The last section of my trip was the SAQA conference in Arlington, VA and I needed lots of business cards. Complications with internet service as we traveled prevented me from getting cards made via an online service. Instead I made a digital collage of the images of 2 dozen of the little collages I had made, printed them at a Kinko's, and cut them up. Fun cards - 24 different designs.

When I finally returned to my studio, I edge stitched each piece then satin stitched over that. The final step to prepare them for the art vending machine was to glue a piece of mat board with my personal information on it to the back of each tiny collage. I kept a few of my favorites and sent off the rest to be included in the vending machine at its 2014 summer home at the Wild Center in nearby Tupper Lake. Here are some of the completed collages.

Well, that's my story of the tiny collages for the art vending machine. But it's just the beginning of what I did with the pieces I kept and the collages that resulted. As the month proceeds, I'll have more posts about techniques, materials, and processes with fabric collage.

Posted by Cris Winters