Collage and Stitch: Mixing Paper, Fabric and Thread

1. Introduction: Hello. My name is Lucy Duplo, and I am a graphic designer surface. I live in Victoria, British Columbia. It's such a vibrant, colorful city and gardens everywhere and art ocean, and I love it. I just think it's the perfect size city. If you follow me on Instagram, you see my low collages already that I do, especially when I tried to clean my desk to work on the different project, and I have all these old piece of papers there to fabulist. It's her away, so I kind of have Teoh do something with them. So I turned them into a collage. One of those little collage got the attention off up the case because even they asked me to design cover but for Issue 41 on the surface pattern design guy. And so that's very exciting because I love this magazine. But enough about me. Let's talk about my new class collage and steps. This is my sixth class on skill share, and it's kind of a follow up to my collage nickel class, which is my most popular class he'll share and collection go. We focused on gathering and organizing and creating textures on found paper to bring them into a collage in collage in Stitch. We're going to focus on playing with negative shapes, and we're gonna introduce fabric and stitching into our kalar rashes. I mentioned to them will make this really cool Herbal Dictionary of Shapes and would also create our own stitch sampler that we can use as a reference to bring our collage. I'm really excited about this class because it combines to my main passion with her surface bags on fabric design and makes me so That's like the perfect class for me. And I hope it's the perfect class for you, and I hope you'll join me and collage in Stitch with me. So I hope to see you soon in class. And yet, though. 2. Materials : So let's go over the material that you're gonna need for this class. So, firstly, some scissors. I really like this brand Scotch titanium because I can cut through fabric pretty well with it and paper. You're gonna need a glue stick. Uh, pencil and an eraser you're gonna need on how and also a embroidery needle. This is the kind that I get and some DMC thread, maybe three couple colors. You could also just use one color. You will need some matt medium. So these are little. This is a a fluid medium, and this is more like a gel. So depending on what you're trying to dio, it might, you might want to use one or the other, but I'll demonstrate that in the video you'll need some scotch tape and some, um, like a technical drawing pen. And this is the one I use is 10.5, a post cut paint marker. And I use that P, C B M bullet shape, and, um, I said, glue stick right. Either glue stick. I also need some card stock, and you don't want it to think because you are going to stitch to it through it. So you want something that he's got the whole body, but you don't want it to sick by this at Staples, it's really, uh it's not that expensive and get a stash of 250 so you can just go and use it as much as you want, and you have to worry about it. We're gonna use one of these foam trade that you get at the grocery store, and you know when you buy vegetables or something, I don't know why they put in there. I meet a lot of time, but they do, and I use it, uh, security and globes. I would like Teoh get a window because we're gonna use that for something. So just the window part. But you can also use the rest of it. Uh, some coffee filters. You might want to iron them first. I ironed them because we're gonna use him flat, so it's helpful to do that. You got some tracing paper, but that's you don't have to, but I'll show you something I could do with tracing paper. That's that's really interesting. You will need your stash off fabric scraps so it could be they could be just little pieces . They could be just like samples that you got somewhere. This is something that I did like a calendar that I printed on spoon flour. And you know, I don't know what to do with it, because it's 2000 and 11 so I'll just I'll just cut it in pieces and use maybe just a piece of the writing there. Um, book pages are great, and you can also use book. Um, this the the book, the book clock. So this is really kind of cool to use in your collage. And if the book is old enough, it will come right out. So and you'll need your stash of collage papers. So, uh, stuff that you did in ecological class and these are papers that we did in the print steppin role class. And it's just called stuff that I collected along the way magazine pages in maps and security antelopes, and I think that covers everything. You can also download the list of materials in the projects and resource section, so let's get started 3. Working with Shapes: So let's start with working with shapes and negative space. How do we find interesting shapes and come up with do ideas? I think that the mid century, the style of design you're gonna find a lot of good good ideas. This one is a 1950 fashion print by my knee fog. And you could just look at all these really cool shapes in this book and here and that, and, you know, the mix of designs there together on And, um, again, you know, mixing with different textures and something you can do to get ideas is if you look at something that has interesting shapes, you can kind of deconstruct it, you know, just look a different thing. Okay? Look at this. That's a cool she Then I'm looking at this shape like that. That's kind of cool. And I would see you just kind of take it apart, you know, like, uh, let me see if we can find something else that's really fun. Look here. This kind of shape is really cool is gonna shape. I don't. So if you go through magazines and books and stuff Oh, this is really awesome. So you can find. Just look for interesting, different shapes. Then Look at that sweet, Pretty great. No, you know, so you can take a shape and start to do different version of it like a fat version of this . And that's also already cool shape. So kind of make yourself like a list of shapes that you can, uh, you know, cut, then cut apart. Then it'll create more shapes. I think something kind of funds that I did I kind of went through the whole alphabet and I just decided I just put a little shape for each letter, take a to Z, and so you could do that. Or you could just pick, like, 10 different shapes and play with them. Um, So I'm going to show you, like every time you work with a shape and you cut it out, then you're gonna end up with the negative space. So let's take, for example, you have a little stash of paper here, do some when it cut out some sheeps. So let's start with the 1st 1 on my list, which is the abbey. So the abbey, the way I do it is I cook like I cut little little doors, no arches. Hoops will cut my figure. I e Okay, so I just couldn't little arches in there, and I just I just named it Abby because then I know I know to refer to that, but, um, there really abstract shapes, So So the negative shame that it creates You have all these pieces that are really awesome . You can just do it like that. Or we can bring him in here like that. You could cut it in half. When is that? And that's so again, there so many possibilities. You can always take everything out and just use these three and I will be part of, like, the side of your collage. So let's do the next one. So I get all these pieces here that I created all these shapes and a lot of time. The leftover shapes are really cool, so I'm just gonna put him in here cause I'm gonna use it in the collage, and I go to the next one, which is the bowl. So I'm going to do a bowl, so to do a bowl, I'm going to the circle first. I couldn't have so I can do it like that. And I could do it like this. Two bulls if I can cut another boat. See, I have this piece that that's the leftover piece from that from trying to make a bowl of all of that. And I thought it was pretty cool to put this, you know, here. Maybe like that. And then I have He's great design already that I could use a start of a collage. And so we go down to the sea, which is canoe. I'm gonna do my canoe. Basically, it's a leaf that you cut in half not to, can you? And then you could put like that. Then you have all these cool little piece that are left over desired a negative. That's a negative space. The shape that decrees. So it do a whole bunch of stuff with that. It gives you, like, four elements to play with. And that's what he intends this color. So it would probably just I have used a little bit of that I would use That would be you. Canoe doughnut. You doing this? And when I do these, I don't need to punch in the middle here. I usually just go around because you're gonna glue it together. So there's my doughnut. My circle. There's this. Oh, so you get turned around and there's something else going on. I want if you want to cut that your doughnut in half. I hope this is There you go. That's interesting. So that's your, um, doughnut. He I is awesome. I'm gonna cook circle the I that this in half. Well, I'm gonna go. That's really funny. So this is this fun? Went to work with magazine because on the other side is always something. So I turned this around and there was space. It's a little creepy, but still kind of cool there. There you go. There and then factory for love. Doing these factories calling factories because they look like old fashioned factories. And there's your factory. The smoke coming out saying grin, Foreign gram, No grim way. Way you 4. Working with Fabric: so to bring fabric into your collages, I'm gonna have to find a way to stabilize it, because otherwise it's just gonna Frey, and it's gonna be really hard to work with. So there's a few ways to do that. That worked really well. Um, I use a mat medium, and I I want to show you a few ways to to stabilize your fabric. So I used, like, a pretty cheap brush because otherwise he's gonna mess up your brush with its kind almost like glue. This mad medium if you have something that has a little body already, uh, you might want to just put some matt medium on the back off your piece of fabric, and when it dries, it's gonna feel like this. So you let it drive, and when it dries, it's gonna is gonna be like this, so it's gonna be like more. He's gonna have more body, and you can do the math medium on the front of it, which will change the color a little bit. But that's OK. In some case, it's nice and depending what you looking for. So that would give you something like this so you can see it gives it a little bit of a shine. So it really depends on what you're looking for. If you want to keep that the flat texture of the of your fabric, then just put on the back. If you want to give it a little shine, then just doing a front. So if you have something that's really, really flimsy, like cotton like this, that's kind of really hard to work within the collage and that phrase a lot. So what I do for that is I use my handy dandy coffee filters that I firing and I just put Met medium on the back of my piece of fabric. You can also put it when the coffee felt there. It just depends Case I need a lot more and I'm gonna cut it so I don't worry too much about Okay, And then I'm gonna put it on my coffee fielder and then I'm gonna let it dry so it looks like it's not working. Eso let's put it on on the coffee filter instead does. It's interesting. It just really depends on what kind of fabric you're using. Because I was using this kind of linen used this kind of linen fabric and they work with you Well, when I put the coffee filter, but this apparently is drinking more of the mat medium, and then you're gonna let this drive. So I think the problem is, if you're going to use very thin fabric, he might wanna watch What kind of met medium using. So this one is fluid and this one is worth like a gel. So I'll show you the difference. And it does work a little bit better on thin fabric because it doesn't go through the fabric as much. It kind of stays on top. I'll show you put it on my coffee filter. You see how it works a little bit better. Then when I did with this one here with fluid, it kind of went all. It went through the fabric. It completely went through the fabric. It's still gotta work. It's just a different effect, like this one. Here. I put met medium on the back, and this is without met medium, so you can see how it phrase and it's really be hard. I mean, you can work with it like that. It's just that it's much easier when you're working in a collage to have it with a little bit more stability, and you can use either way. Actually, this one makes it darker. Kind of like it because I put them at media in the back. But then, looking at distant, it's kind of cool when you're done with that, it's also it's much easier to cut. You're gonna say if I'm putting a piece of coffee filter on their back off my fabric, and now it's time to cut it, and I got to use my fabric, scissors or my paper scissors home. I used the's scissors for everything. I buy him at Costco, and they're about how much they are. But it's a three pack, and there they were, great on fabric. They cut fabric really well, you know, and, uh, this one, it's pretty good. And then, if you don't want to use your scissors, your fabric scissors for for cutting these filters than just use these and they work pretty well, C makes a really sharp edge. The other thing you can do is to use book laws. You know you can buy book cloth already for bookmaking, and you can use that and that's that works really well. And you can also peel the full cloth off old books and dictionaries and stuff and just use collage. Could be super fun to use. That does pretty nice colors on. There you go. So that's it. Teoh steak, some fabric and just experiment and give yourself make you make yourself a little stash, and then we're gonna start collage with it. 5. Stitch Sampler: So next we're gonna work on our stitch sampler. So stitch samplers or embroidery samplers, collection of different stitches and and motif and alphabets and different things. They they were pretty elaborate, and they were kind of more of a a showcase of the kind of stuff you could do. And there's some really good books out there embroideries to give you ideas on what kind of steps you can do. But what we're gonna do is gonna be pretty simple. We're gonna do more of a mark making sampler, and the way we're going to do that is you use a piece we're gonna practice. We want to get practice on the page like this, and then we can use that as a reference later because it's gonna be a lot easier than going straight on your collage, because that's the last thing we do in the collage. You can I want to know what you're doing. That's what I'm saying. So to practice, you can do, I would say, feel the page with different things and marks that you like to usually use in your artwork and just kind of have fun with it And do you know like I'm gonna do, You can do circles and then you could do, uh, lines. You can do that kind of stitch like that. You can do stars I love to do stars. Things are great And we just fill up the page. And when you're done with that, what you'll do is you'll take your your up your all I can say I can't say that word. It sounds like an owl when I say it up. And, um, it's like a Eboo in French. So So you take your boots and then you you want to make your holes first before you gonna stitch it. So what? I'm what I'm using to put behind my piece of paper to to put my holes is, uh, you just those little phone trade that you get from different things at the supermarket and I just cut the middle, and then I use it to do my students My punch, my holes. So I'm gonna just do punch my holes here If you don't have, you just want to do the deed. And here, if you don't have a now for a Eboo, you can use your embroidery needle and do you hold with that? First? The reason why we want to do that like that before IHS. Anyway, you gonna do the whole page because what we want to do is once you've done all your whole thing, you can erase your life. You can raise your lying before you actually stitched that we don't get. We'll see it underneath. Good. Now. So you might want to go the lighter on the pencil, then I did. So you don't see the line as much. So now we're gonna start stitching. Um, o came off. Let's do discolored. I think the like three colors here, but you could pick just one color if you want. I just know that it gets more fun to do it with more colors, but you know as many as you want, but you can also keep it super simple. I don't know if you all know, but to get the thread out of the DMC thread. The best way to do this is to go from where the number is and to pull it. Do you put from there and should come right out because if you do it the other way, it's just gonna get, like, not you gonna get all these knots. So now I'm gonna cut this. I use I always about two strands or three. I'm gonna split this in half. Okay? Okay. So then you can use that for later. I use thes embroidery needles on the I lost Kendall. So here you go. Yes. I'm gonna threat this. You can put a knot at the end. All right? Okay. So you can put a knot at d N here, but, you know, you probably gonna have to put some tape because it's gonna get go right through. So let's I'm going to start here from the bath, so holding. But if you want to be safe, you want to put you could put a piece of tape and I'm gonna stick wrist. And if there is no way, it's really helpful to have the holes already because when you go in the back because don't know where to step on the ways, okay. And I go right to the next one here because it's just a sampler. It's not, you know, piece of art for anything that looks good. It's all I don't so and so on. So then And then when you're done, basically you just peace. That's the way I do it. It's probably a better way. And so I really just used a simple stitch for everything. I don't get too fancy with embroidery, but if you wanted to, the only thing I like to do is the Bills French, not here. I'll show you how to do that. I just love doing needs. And I love the released effect of it. So the way to do those ISS you go in right here, put a knot. Did not you go in and you wrap your threat around your needle three times. 123 groups. See, I didn't put tape. That's what happens. It's not like I do. I didn't follow my own advice. So here you go. Well, uh, okay. Now you go three times. 123 and then you go right back. You go in the same hole if you want, but we gonna work. And so it could do a bunch of these. And you can actually use different colors and can go crazy. Awesome. So, basically, I want you to fill a page and enjoy and try to come up with some fun stitches. You can look in embroidery books if you want, and try to find a different ideas for stitching and stuff, and you can keep it as as simple or as intricate as you want. Have fun and experiment and list. Put it all together in the next video. 6. Class Project : So now it's time to put it all together. So we have our little stash here of fabric that we prepared with that medium. And then we have all the leftover pieces from the agency of shapes fallen EVC that have in French. And I want you to cut to pick three pieces of fabric or a mix of fabric and, um, paper. So this is a piece of fabric that was on a coffee filter. And I want him to be different sizes and also different in style and color and density. And so these this is written dictionary page fabric. And, um, this is just paper from jeans book. So cut you three squares and then you're gonna cut a different shape in each of them. So remember our little ABC here that we did Just look at kind of good ideas from that. And maybe you picked three different shapes from that, or you can make another one up, but, um, just start cutting. So I'm I'm inspired to do an eye out of this for some reason. Not sure why, but I will do that. See, the fabric is great now to cut with. Now that I put mad medium and a coffee filter. OK, I want to put an eye in here. It's, you know, you want to keep all your leftover pieces. Are those are precious? Yeah. All right. I have that. So this is a night out of one of my piece for my other piece. I think I'm just gonna do, like, a tunnel out of this. My bull big. I cut it. And you know what? I might end up just using this piece out of it. I'm not sure yet. Okay. And then this one, I want to do a vase because I want to Hello. These okay? And it could be walking. It just adds interest. If it's a little monkey, I wouldn't worry trying to do everything perfect. Okay, so this is these are my pieces to start with for now. Um, and you don't want to have too much of I mean, you want to have one bigger piece, but this is thes piece. You can tell already. There too much of it. So I'm probably gonna get rid of one of them on this. Probably one of them. This one? I'm not sure yet. If I want to keep it. I'm not sure, but I kind of like this appear. It's very cool. I might make it. And is it here again? Just think about the negative shape that it creates when you work with your pieces. This almost looks like a face. I don't think I wanted to look like a face, but Oh, this kind of looks cool, All right. I think that's a good start. I think that's a good start. But obviously, I'm gonna need more stuff. And I don't want everything to line up. Like, right now, it's creating a square, so I'm gonna want to cut that shorter. Do you like this piece Somehow? Not sure how I'm gonna do it. I don't like this is to be shorter. Okay, so now I'm going to go into my little stash here because I need more stuff. I think this is a nice color. You know what you can do with these? You can put some holes in them with a whole bunch. It was a battle texture this way, way, - way . Yes. I'm kind of happy with that for now, because I'm gonna be adding some, uh, lying work and stitching and stuff, so I don't want it to be too crowded. I want to have room toe. Add something I shouldn't. Shouldn't look like it's finished at this point. Maybe this here. Yeah. You know, you want to create spaces where you can add some stuff. So I'm pretty happy with this at this point, and I'm gonna go ahead and just glue it down, and I will take it to the next step. 7. Finishing Touches: Okay, So I glued everything down and with my glue stick, and I'm gonna add some marks and I'm gonna add phone stuff that I want to stitch on there. So a good way to do It's kind of hard to do because stitching is so It's hard to see what it's gonna look like before you actually do it. It's not like just drawing on there. So the way I work is that I I can t think about you know what would look good here and stuff. And some of the marks that would really like Teoh I can trace them with tracing paper like this would be kind of cool and maybe I want to use, you know, that's your reference. So maybe I want to use, um, thoughts here, and I would do some of these French knots in here. And then maybe, um, there's still room to add leader other things to with Marker, our post campaign pen, you know, so we'll do that after the stitching. But for now, we're just thinking about stitching and again doesn't have to be super busy, but I just want to add a few things, A few things that would make it interesting and would give it a little dimension Toe. I love these French not hear some of that because it would be over and they would tip stitched into the fabric. And, um, maybe some of these guys, actually, maybe I just want to have, um, you know, like this would stitch over that might work I knew is that once you have all your marks and now, like, you might want to do some. You know, some of these want to have that on your treason papers. You can move it around and see where it works, because maybe that's too predictable. It is better to have this here. It's actually more interesting tohave it there. So that's a nice thing about the tracing paper, because automatically, I would just do it there. But I actually like it better right here. So I I'm deciding on a few things, and so there's a way to transfer this exactly where I want, especially if I'm gonna use dark threatened. I think I will think I'm gonna use this color thread to stitch. So I actually found that every works well with when you used the window from security. And what you do is you just trace it with this marker and you turned it around, and then you just place it where you want it. We'll be right there. You just have to make sure it's the other side where you drew, pull it up, and then it just marks it for you. So if you're gonna use something really light as it is a threat, I think probably you don't when you work on what by grounded. If you wanted to and didn't want to see the lines, then you would want to just drive with your pencil and then make your holes and then, um, erases before you do your stitching. So now we're way, way will technique here. Then you would use your little you would be using this. Teoh would work a lot better if you use that. Okay. So take your holes. Okay. That that I want to do some French knots, like right over here. And also, it's what else could have put on there. Sometimes you can just put holes. It looks cool. Do some stitching. You know, um, I think that's it from that, and I'm gonna stitch it. All right, Look at it. Spread. Alright. So back. No. All right. We're putting subscription Stop. - So you don't really see the line on the lines on the need, so it's pretty good, but oh, you know what? I forgot. I forgot to erase it. You go. Once you have the holes, you don't need to have the last. - So then I'm gonna finish all of these old knots here and here. I'm not sure if I'm just gonna leave holes, or if I want to stitch something, I probably will. Still something on. Ben will be ready to add some marker and some post campaign pan if we feel like we want. So I finished my little French knots, and I did stitching here, have some there and there. I probably could erase some of this a little bit. Okay, Um, so now it's time to bring in some detail with my marker and my postcode paint. Been so I will start with the black markers and I will add some. You know, I don't know scallops here Now that I did a little star here, maybe I do something else here. I had some details in here and maybe some scallops here and some lines. Andi, and maybe some Flores. Okay, so I I kind of like this, and I'm gonna add some white poster, paint them so I can add everywhere where it's a little darker. I can add some white. So, like, here, this is right on the fabric. When we I think I put some mate Matt medium on the top of this piece. So it works really well to paint over it. So that's one of the advantage of using it on that sign is that you can paid over, like here. Oops. Don't push too hard. This was okay. Ill dry, um, and then maybe I wanna s so I think it was pretty good. Maybe I'll add a little bit of a little something here that could need something. Um, maybe some dots here. So there you go. I think I'm pretty happy with that. I might want to add something here. I feel like there's a little hole here that needs to be filled. So this is when you look at your piece and you think OK, does almost there. But I need something. Then you might want to add a little piece of collage thinking it needs something a little darker. Not sure what kind of shape it needs, but oh, here, Going up some holes in this one just needs hope. See what happens. This will have. But that's okay. So maybe it's needs to be a circle. I don't know. For half circle for 1/4 then? I don't know. I just need something. You just keep cutting until it works again. Check for negative space. So now this is more interesting because it flows. When I had it like that, I feel like it's kind of jammed in here, so I'm gonna put it here. It's gonna have a little group. We say it has. No way said that. Oh, no. He said sometimes when you you don't remember. By the time you glue it Where you were gonna Where you gonna put it? Some, uh, take pictures of how I haven't before I glue it. So I remember otherwise. Get lost. And I want to fix this. Let's put more dark. Here you go. That's better. So I think I'm pretty happy with this. And, um, that's it. So I would say just go and have fun and enjoy and just play around. Experiment as much as you can and don't worry about what it's gonna look like. Just you do a bunch of them at the same time and just just enjoy, enjoy the process, so I'll see you soon. 8. Thank You: Thank you so much for taking my class. I can't wait to see your project, So please upload them in that I need under the project and a resource section below here and follow me on its rep at Lucy Glow. And you can also follow me here on skill share. And you'll be the 1st 1 to know when a publishing new class or giveaways free Nalo There are tips on I would love to see you next class. Thank you again and see Zoom.