Good mail and more on the fabric mosaic

I got a box from Jane Davila a couple days ago, containing a copy of her new book and my artwork that she used in the gallery section of the book. Jane is one of the hardest working artists I know. This is her third book, she blogs, she has an online business, she teaches and she makes art! She has used my work in her last two books and she has been a joy to work with. She's another of the longtime online friends I finally had a chance to meet awhile back. She is from Connecticut, but turns out her brother lives just up the hill from me. It is such a small world!

Anyway, Jane's book is terrific! It is filled with how-to's for all kinds of surface design work on fabric and/or paper. The format is unusual and so practical. It is a smallish size with a coil binding, covered by a nice outer cover. This makes it possible to open it up and have it lay flat, so you can work with it at your side for reference. This is the kind of book you will keep and use for years and years. I'm so happy to have two of my pieces shown as examples. My portrait of my grandmother Hazle uses pastel pencils to create the shading in the face and clothing, and the crow piece uses fabrics I stamped, using my own stamp designs.

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After I posted my progress on a new quilt a few days ago, Lisa left a comment asking for more information about the technique I was using. As I mentioned, I got the idea for this kind of fabric collage/mosaic from Terri Stegmiller's blog. I don't know how Terri is doing it, but I can describe my interpretation of the technique.

I started by cutting swatches of a whole assortment of brown fabrics. I pressed them, using spray starch, which gives them a little more body and helps to keep them from fraying badly, then I cut a whole pile of odd-shaped pieces—mostly triangles and parallelograms. I used my liquid fusing technique on each piece and starting laying them on the felt that I am using as the batting for this piece. I butted and overlapped to completely cover the felt. I lay down a section at a time and then use my small iron to fuse that section, then move on to the next section. In the picture below you can see my tools and materials: tray full of cut pieces, scissors, bottle of fusing liquid and little Clover brand mini iron.