Fabric Art

Andy Warhol once said, "Art is whatever you can get away with". This is my version of abstract fabric art. Use your imagination and see what you come up with. Just remember that the smaller the pieces are, the longer it will take to sew around each one. Get creative! 

For this project you will need a sewing machine, thread, scissors, wonder-under fusible webbing (purchased by the yard) cotton fabric scraps or old shirts. pins and an old painting on a canvas. I confess, this was my attempt at painting a colorful picture. It just didn't turn out like I wanted. Wood framed canvas is not cheap, I could either paint over it or throw it away. I chose to cover it with fabric. 

For the background piece, allow 2" extra on all 4 sides for wrapping around and gluing to the back. Place a safety pin where the corners of the canvas will be. Iron on some fusible webbing, paper side up, to the wrong side of the fabric. peel the paper off and place a piece of fabric onto this. Iron this down. This step strengthens the fabric without adding bulk to the sides and corners. 

Iron a piece of fusible webbing onto a fabric scrap paper side up. I used about 3 yards of fusible webbing for this project. 

Cut out different sized shapes. If you have a particular design in mind figure out before what colors you want where. It might be helpful to draw your design on a piece of paper first.

After you get the shapes cut out then you peel the paper backing off. If it does not peel off easily, try ironing it again. 

Arrange your pieces and then re-arrange until you get them the way you like.

The fusible webbing keeps the fabric from slipping around while sewing it down to the background fabric. Make sure you iron the fusible side down, otherwise it will stick to the iron and make an awful mess. 

Select a wide zig-zag stitch on your sewing machine. shorten the stitch length and zig-zag around each piece to secure it to the fabric background. After I zig-zagged around each piece I sewed buttons on in random places.

place the fabric on table right side down. Center the canvas on top of this right side down also. bring the fabric up and over to the back of the canvas. using a hot glue gun, glue the corners first and then the sides to the back of the canvas.

hammer 2 small nails to the back of the canvas about 4" from the top. tie string to the nails and hammer the rest of the way in. Your artwork is ready to hang.

Here is another version. A colorful street scene.