Fabric Book Pages or Cover Background
© 2009, Denise Funfsinn
I’m in the process of creating a fabric book to give to a relative later this year. Since I’ve accumulated a decent stash of thread, fabric, and fiber clippings from other projects, I decided to add them as an embellished quilted fabric background for some pages. You can use this technique to make a fabric background for a wall hanging, soft box, journal cover, ornaments, postcards, ATCs, etc. Let your imagination soar with a color theme and a variety of specialty threads, fibers, and fabrics.
Fabric base
Fusible fleece
Sulky ® Solvy –water soluble stabilizer
Clippings of threads, fibers, & fabrics
Pressing cloth
Quilt Basting Spray (June Tailor®) running water
Iron, Sewing machine, thread, pins
The base of this quilted sandwich is a sample of discontinued home decorator fabric from a local sewing center, about 18” x 10”. I cut a piece of fusible fleece and pressed it to the backside of the home dec fabric. (You could substitute a heavyweight interfacing like Peltex or thin batting and spritz it lightly with Quilt Basting Spray)
On the front of the fleece-backed fabric you now scatter a layer of thread, fiber, and fabric clippings. (you could spray it with the quilt basting spray if you are worried about it shifting or blowing away – I didn’t bother, I just lightly sprayed after I placed the clippings on).
Cut a piece of Sulky Solvy (water soluble stabilizer), lay on top of the embellished fabric and pat it down lightly with your palms so it sticks to the fibers. I then pinned the whole piece with about 8 straight pins so it didn’t shift.
Now it is time to sew a grid all over the sandwich (fleece side on the bottom, Solvy side on top). My sewing machine had a lightweight white embroidery thread in the bobbin, and a dark gold rayon thread on top (Sulky). New needle, stitch length 3.5, and straight stitch setting, sew a grid all over the sandwich attaching the bits and pieces securely. My grid was basically diamonds and then some free form spirals and curves to fill in.
If you have any loose pieces of solvy sticking out along the sides, tear those off and place back in your sealed bag for another use.
Next take the whole piece and soak it in the sink under running water, lightly rubbing with your fingers. The Solvy will dissolve readily. Lightly squeeze out the piece and roll it in a towel to absorb excess water. Iron between a couple of press cloths to dry it and prevent your iron from picking up any sticky residue that could possibly remain.
You now have an embellished, quilted fabric background to use a base. I plan to add fabric photo transfers and beading to my piece for a fabric book cover.
Posts
Several of my encaustic pieces have been juried into the Venus Envy -Quad Cities 2010 show.
Bohemian Memory was done in the summer of 2009 and hung bottom-side up for quite awhile until I kept seeing Abraham Lincoln peering back at me! So I flipped it over and liked it better this way. It's 24" x 36" acrylic textured with molding paste and stencils and some paper collage.
Here's the patchwork bookmark without the frou-frous of yarn embellishment, and a couple of birds before stringing them onto transparent ribbon.
studio. The first one is a piece I worked on awhile back: Crumpled brown bag paper, painted with metallic acrylics and embellisheed with varigated rayon thread sewn with a variety of programmed stitches from my Pfaff 1475. This is the front and back view of the same piece. 
The next three are fabric paper samples I made quite some time back. The pink one has a muslin base with scrapbooking paper, printed tissue paper, sewing pattern tissue, and washes of fluid acrylics. The blue one has a base of coarse, large weave cloth similar to burlap. It's layered with wrapping paper and sparkle tulle with washes of fluid acrylics. The final green - blue piece is again the coarsely woven fabric, wrapping and decorative napkins, white tulle, and washes of fluid acrylics. I like making them in rather large sheets - about 20" x 30" or 24" x 36"
"before" and "after" pics of my pages. Here's another spread before journaling. Layers of dry brushed acrylics, collaged tags, papers, and stickers. I think these fit in nicely with the concept of layering, especially the paint, that we are exploring in Techniques Sunday with the mmartfriends yahoo group.
