Fiber Explorations Part I

I have been quilting for years, but tend to cling rather stubbornly to the more traditional aspects of the craft. I recently started exploring my inner fiber artist buried deep within...or rather dragging her out kicking and screaming. I think the scientist in me finds comforts in the rules and formulas involved in traditional quilting techniques. However the artist in me is always drawn to the more "artsy" items I see.

While looking for resources to read about art quilts, I stumbled upon a group called Fiber Art Traders, or FAT for short, on Yahoo. These wonderful artists share techniques and trade items they make. SO far I have participated in a trade where we made paper towel jewelry, and one where we made button fairies.

Here is an example of my paper towel jewelry:

And here are my button fairies:

About the time I found FAT, I read an article by the leader of FAT, Normajean Brevik, where she was talking about inchies. Inchies are little one inch square art pieces, which can be done in many different mediums, but her article was talking about fiber art inchies. So I started exploring different techniques in fiber art, and making different batches of inchies.

First, I made a batch where I fused fabric to a background, then laid organza over it and machine quilted the surface. Here are those inchies:

...and here are some hair pins I made from them with some beading added:






Next, I took some black and white print fabric for the background and made some inchies where I couched some fancy yarn onto the surface of them:
I have not done anything with those yet , but I think they are very interesting.

Stay tuned for my next installment, where I will play with Angelina fibers and maybe some picture transfers to fabric!