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Backgrounds for Felt and Stitched Pieces

Backgrounds for Felt and Stitched Pieces

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I have been working on creating backgrounds for my recently finished felt and stitched pieces. In the past, I have dyed the fabric to try to match the pieces. This time I decided to try the fabric store and see if there was some solid fabric that would work.

The background for Sanctuary is the only piece that I dyed. I actually used tea to “stain” this fabric. I wanted a soft tan color and the tea seemed to work. I then stitched the felt piece down to the dyed cotton fabric and laced it to matt board. It’s a lot of work but the pieces seem to hold up well and then I don’t have to cover them with glass.

At the fabric store, I found fat quarters that would work for all my pieces. I can’t say that I think the colors are perfect but they work OK.

So each piece got a different color of fabric and I didn’t have to buy a bunch of extra fabric that I probably won’t use.

This one is a bit too bright, but I don’t think I will change any of them at this point.

These all sit nicely on the stretch cotton fabric and you really can’t see where they are stitched to the background fabric.

This one and the oak tree piece were fused down to the fabric instead of stitching. I tried to stitch the oak tree down but where I had silk screened on to the surface just wasn’t taking the stitches well. So I applied fusible to the back of each of these pieces and then ironed them to the background fabric. It was much quicker than stitching and I might use this method from now on instead of stitching. As long as the piece isn’t too heavy it should work.

Now I need to get these to the framer. I am planning on putting them in an exhibition in August. So I have plenty of time yet.

Finishing and Framing Sanctuary

Finishing and Framing Sanctuary

Comments 11 comments

I have several pieces that need to be finished and framed in some manner. It would be handy if I always followed the same procedure but many times I like to show organic edges but my recent piece Sanctuary wasn’t going to work out well framed that way. I needed to crop it and then frame it. It is very thick as it has several layers of felt appliqued to felt. And I didn’t want it to stretch out of shape while I was sewing the edges.

I marked the edges first trying to keep everything square. You can see faint lines around the edges where I marked the line I was going to machine stitch. By machine stitching, I could hold all the layers together as some of the hand stitched edges were going to end up being cut away.

I stitched with a dark brown thread and followed my line. I stitched over it twice to make sure everything was holding together. To keep it even and straight, I added a heavy interfacing to the back and pinned it all together before stitching.

Once it was stitched around the edge, I trimmed off the excess with a rotary cutter. As you can see, I didn’t quite get the top edge straight. But it will have to do 🙂

Then I zigzag stitched all around the edge a couple of times. There were a few white bits of felt sticking out and I fixed that with the appropriate colored Sharpie marker. Now to mount it on a canvas or in a frame.

I could put it in this frame with a white mat but I feel that the white is a little bit too stark and it would look better with a slightly darker mat board. Or on a lovely piece of fabric that I don’t seem to have. I definitely need to dye some cotton fabric backgrounds for several pieces now.

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