Below, four photos of a large fabric paper collage: click for more detail.

My dear friend, award winning quilter & mixed media artist: Frieda Oxenham has inspired me to create the fabric-paper collage you see above! Please click on this link to view Frieda’s blog and learn more about her technique for making fabric paper.

After corresponding and sharing our art through the mail and online for many years, Frieda & I finally met. I travelled to Scotland and stayed with her for a week! While there, I was honored to attend an exhibit that featured her 52 Journal Quilts. Seeing that exhibit, going to art museums with Frieda, wandering through her gardens, going on long walks and enjoying the Scottish countryside was wonderful.

For this fabric-paper collage I followed Frieda’s process of rubber stamping a background, layering collage papers, adding thin layers of paper napkins and tissue paper and lastly, adding color to the fabric with paint. I used Dye-na-Flow, which is acrylic paint that is very thin, almost like a dye. It’s permanent on fabric when heat set. My only mistake was using such a large cotton sheet as the base for this project. I persevered but the technique was more difficult to do on such a large piece of fabric. The good news is, I still have pieces of this fabric-paper to use. Next time I try this technique, I’ll use a smaller piece of fabric as the base. A few of the steps are shown below and you’ll find more info on Frieda’s Blog.

First, a bit of rubber stamping to create a background. I used permanent ink pads designed for fabric.

Then add paper and decorative napkins to your fabric with matte medium, similar to doing paper collage. Finish by adding color with dye-a-flow, brushing or spraying it on.

After the fabric dried, I cut it into smaller sections to use as a background for other projects like the ATCs below...

This project is especially great to try if you either like working with fabric, doing collage, or both! I encourage you to give it a try.