and then cut it up to make this beautiful little treasure chest.

This is the front view …

One side view …

The other side view …

And the back.

I like the way it turned out and it’s a great way to use up those beautiful pieces of fabric paper!

I just love the paper fabric technique because you can produce such beautiful surface texture and the piece can be as soft or rigid as you need. This time round I’ve been playing with adding some free motion embroidery and decorative stitches to the fabric paper before painting it.

Some of the results have not been so good which is annoying because it’s such a time consuming process, but I think I’ve finally found a process that works. I just love the results so far on this piece and can’t wait to finish it!

By the way, don’t forget to sign up for the new November mini-class at the Free Lunch Cafe – “Fabric Paper”. I’ll be sharing some of my favorite tips and techniques for making fabric paper.

Making “fabric paper” is one of my favorite techniques, particularly for small collage pieces. I generally make these pieces with texture in mind so that I can use them as a base for adding free motion quilting or embroidery. “Scraps” is a good example of a finished art quilt using fabric paper as a background.

So this weekend I spent a little time out in the dye room making some fabric paper backgrounds for some little collage pieces I wanted to do and I thought I’d share the instructions.

You’ll need some muslin, tissue paper, cheesecloth, pva glue, fabric paint or acrylic paint. You can also add other elements into the fabric paper such as images or fabric scraps; anything that can be glued down.

Take a piece of muslin and rinse it so that it’s damp.

Then make your glue mixture – a couple tablespoons of pva glue mixed with a little water so it’s nice and runny.

Then add some color; either fabric paint or acrylic craft paint.

Using a foam brush, slop on the paint so that the muslin is saturated.

Next add the tissue paper. You want a piece of tissue paper that is about twice the size of the muslin. Scrunch the tissue paper and using the flat side of the foam brush, mash it onto the top of the muslin. Use extra glue paint if necessary to flatten it down.

Now add bits of cheesecloth and mash them onto the top of the tissue paper. You can scrunch it or stretch it out.

Add bits of extra color for contrast.

Now go away and leave it alone until it dries. Since it’s a sloppy mess, this might take a little while.

Once they dry the pieces are quite stiff but handling them softens them up and of course they are fully stitchable.

I made four different backgrounds:

It’s amazing what you can do with scraps and leftovers. This little quilt (approx 18×12) was put together from samples and scraps leftover from a surface design workshop I recently taught.

Included in this sample is

• tyvek (green squares in middle)
• color washed brown paper (prairie points and leaves)
• paper fabric with some cheesecloth attached (main pink square)

The color washed brown paper was fused onto some peltex and cut to shape. Then I added some machine wrapped cording around the edge of the prairie points to define them against the background.

Since the paper fabric looked very organic, I quilted organic type lines that look like flowing water and pebbles.

The tyvek was also fused to some peltex and cut to shape. I then handstitched the edges to finish them off.

Everything was layered onto a machine quilted background and the end result is very three dimensional. I have yet to add a few more embellishments (it’s not finished till it’s embellished!) and then it will be done.

All in all – a cute little art quilt.