How Do You Finish The Edges?

    So, you've just finished the front and back of one of your works... Now you have to decide what to do with the edges to give it a finished look. Do you sew on a binding, a facing, do a pillowcase finish, or leave the edges raw? The answer should depend on the theme of the piece and the style of it. In the beginning, I used to put traditional bindings on my art quilts because I thought it was required. As I look back on them, I think it was a good choice for most of them because of the way I quilted them. They needed the "frame" around them to complete them.

Water Cycles

Then, later on, I started monoprinting my fabrics with paint. That gave a different look to my work, and a framed edge wouldn't look good. They needed a clean edge. So I sewed on a pillowcase backing to these after most of the quilting was done. Then I did a little more quilting through to the backing to secure it.

Beach Walk

     Lately, I've been dyeing my fabrics and doing hand stitches for the quilting. These pieces are fused to ecofelt before I do the stitching. I was going to sew a facing to these, but decided to leave the edges raw instead. The felt backing causes them to hang very straight and the style lends itself to a raw edge. But to give it a finished look, I hand stitch a running stitch around the edge 1/4" to 1/2" from the edge. Since I had running stitches here and there on the front, and stitched it so the stitches were interrupted with spaces periodically, I did the same to the edge. I could have machine stitched the edge, but I wanted the stitches to be the same on the edges as they are throughout the front. Also, I changed thread color as I went around the edge to match the color of the fabric so that the edge stitching blends in rather than standing out. On other pieces in the future, perhaps I'll use a contrasting thread color depending on the look I want.

Taking Root

     To prevent the cloth on the edges from fraying in the future, I dipped a 1/4" flat brush in matte medium and ran it around the edges. 

close-up of one corner

     I've also made some small (5x7) collages and decided to mount these on 8x10 canvasses in order to make them look more like art than little craftsy things. To do that, I finished the edges first with stitching as I did on the larger pieces, put matte medium around the edge to prevent fraying, and fused them with Misty Fuse to canvases that I had wrapped in black linen. 

Little Transformation1

Little Transformation2

     On the back, I glued ecofelt with a label attached, hammered in upholstery tacks, applied hanging wire, and covered the ends of the wire with tape.

back of a collage

side view of a collage

It really does take a while for me to finish off the pieces, but it's worth it to give a more professional look to them.  And, I'm really loving several products for this... EcoFelt, Misty Fuse, and Embroidery floss. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Do You Multi-Task?

     When you create artwork do you do several at once, several types of things at once, or work on one piece from start to finish before starting another? I used to do the latter. I didn't feel comfortable enough to start a second (or third) piece until the present one was completely done. I didn't like my mind to wander onto other projects and lose my focus. But now that I'm in the Art Cloth Mastery program, I find the need to have several things and processes going on at the same time. There are a lot of things I want to accomplish before my next session in October and I find that one process helps another.
     For example; while I'm waiting for a cloth to batch in the dye bucket, I can hand-stitch another piece or do some color studies with paint. If I'm not sure how I want to hand-stitch a larger piece, I audition stitching on a smaller collage with the same imagery. While I'm trying to choose imagery for an artwork I have in mind, I assemble the background fabrics and have them hang on the design wall to stare at for inspiration. Here is my design wall today. On it is an almost finished piece in gray on the left, the middle one in blue is done printing and layering but needs to have hand-stitching added and be put onto a felt backing, and the green one on the right is waiting for inspiration for imagery to add to it.

The small pieces on top are collages I made with leftover prints and dyed fabrics from the larger ones. They are waiting to be mounted onto a yet undecided surface. 

waiting for stitch and backing

small stitched collage in progress

another small stitched collage

     So I've changed how I work on art and I think I like this new way of having several things going on. It's more relaxing for me to spend part of day hand-stitching and another part of the same day dyeing fabric, and another part of the day in designing mode. It felt more intense to spend the whole day in the studio working on the same process. Live and learn. 

     I'm linking this with Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you visited. Thanks for stopping by.

Do You Have Access To A Good Museum?

     People who live in large cities have access to many quality museums, but what about those of us who live in small towns? Our local museum, The Museum of Art DeLand, gets fantastic exhibits. I don't know how they do it, but we regularly get to see top quality shows. The latest one downtown (the museum has galleries in two separate locations), presently has a show called "Painted Bodies" by photographer Roberto Edwards from Chile. The exhibit is on loan from  The Holden Luntz Gallery.
     The project had very well know artists from all over the world go to Chile to paint onto the bodies of models.  Here are some of the images:

Artist-Linda Mason, England

Artist- Jaime Zapata, Ecuador

Artist Pedro Ruiz, Colombia

Artist- Verónica Rubio, Spain

Artist- Sebastiàn Leyton, Chile

Artist- Verónica Rubio, Spain

Note: the red strings on two of the models aren't actually strings. They are painted onto the models with red paint and the shadows of the "Strings" are also done in paint.
     If you are anywhere close by, do try to see this exhibit in person. It's amazing.  Here's a YouTube video about the project.
     In between museum visits, I'm adding stitching to my series.

Also, here's a link to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the posts so that the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.