Jen Powell designs

For collage number 7 of 2024, I started out with a piece of fabric that I had printed on, using printable fabric sheets. I had copied a gelli-plate-printed piece I had made onto the fabric. I then thought I’d try to do some rust dyeing to the fabric. I have a cool rusty wire coil that I wanted to see the effects of – I wrapped the coil in the fabric, dowsed it with vinegar, and put it in a steam pot for an hour or so. I was disappointed that lot of the original print had disappeared afterwards (I should have anticipated that ink-jet ink would wash out), but the rust dye effect looks nice. There was still some color from the original process but there were marks that disappeared. I decided to draw on the fabric with some marker pens to try to darken some of the original marks. Here is the fabric after all that:

I knew that I wanted to put some fabric bits on the front, some wrapped rope and some other ribbons and things. This would make the project more of a 3D collage, so I added some gray felt behind the background fabric, to give it strength for the additional bits.

I added my chosen fabric embellishments and then got ready for stitching. I decided the color palette based on the fabrics and the background colors:

I used the different threads to help enhance the fabric embellishments I had placed already, and also the drawn marks. It isn’t really meant to depict anything, more of an abstract piece, but it turned into a bit of a landscape. I am learning that I need to work on my photos too, the light in my house is not ideal. That is what this process is for, to keep learning things.

I haven’t used any beads for one of my challenge collage projects yet so I decided to add a few, and here is the finished piece:

These are really fun to make, but I have to be careful to not give myself too much work with this 100-collage challenge. I am trying to finish 2 collages per week, so they can’t be too involved or I end up going beyond my self-imposed deadlines. I have limited my size to 5×5 inches just for this purpose, but I could sit and stitch for a long time and at some point I have to put things down and go on to the next thing. The challenge is good though, I’m learning a lot along the way.