First things FIRST. Lay down a plastic covering on the work service; laying out your muslin and items you want to use in the collage.
The muslin can be any shape; small, squarish…or round if you’d like!
Notice I left the frayed edge (on the left) of the muslin.
By the way, these are items I put in the art quilt “Katie Cutie”.
(the list is endless!)

It’s kind of sloppy-good – no need to measure; I literally just ‘slap it on’ with a cheapo brush, or whatever you have on hand. Don’t buy something new or good quality… in case the glue mixture dries before it’s cleaned. (uhh… oops!)
Next: you will lay down your (pre-planned) miscellaneous ephemera items on the ‘primed’ glue-muslin layer. It will dry fairly quickly, so you don’t want to take too much time deciding what to use.
Note: I know some artists like to use various gel mediums… as far as I know, either will work just fine… (but I’m not an expert – I’m just a hands-on, let’s try this type of girl! I’ve only used tacky glue so far.
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“Give Thanks” paper quilt |
If you find the top tissue layer isn’t sticking, gently add a bit more glue/water mixture to the top of the tissue Than add your paint… watered down as you desire (add a bit of glue to it if you want and this has worked well for me)

Here is the final dried, layered base… notice there is a transparent coating of acrylic paint, watered down significantly… but this is certainly a personal preference! See an earlier piece I did, (below) in which the paint was mostly opaque… and I liked that too… but it does cover up more of the things you laid down… just a different style, really.
Now is the time to add further embellishments… fused flowers were added after the paint had dried.
Let it dry… it will curl.
Once dry, iron it (into submission).
Stabilize it, bat it, back it.
Stitch it.
AND… if you’d like to know more, go to Terri Stegmiller’s blog and the 3 Creative Studios website… (great resource!) She wrote a book: “Creative Paper Quilts” (which I just discovered today, because she left me a comment-thank you Terri!) You can purchase it from Amazon.com too. I hope you will visit her blog, which I enjoy LOTS. She has such great style, and fabulous, colorful inspiration for you! Another resource is a book from Beryl Taylor: Mixed Media Explorations.
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Finished! |
Comments 2
thank you! thank you!!! You explained it so well! I'm ready to go play!
I so enjoy making fabric paper. Your finished result here has such lovely colors in it. Thank you so much for mentioning my book.