In January, I attended a virtual class with the wonderful Mary Ray via my local fiber art organization, Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance. And it was just full of the kind of inspiration that makes you want to drop everything and get into the sewing studio. It was just what I needed!
We have a follow-up virtual meeting this coming Saturday. During this meeting, participants' bricolage projects will be shown. I cannot wait to see what everyone made.
So what is bricolage anyway? As I understand it, the basic idea is to use what you have. That is not all that difficult given the embarassment of riches I have in my fabric storage.
1st Attempt:
Ever since I made a vest from my husband's old jeans, I have been collecting old jeans. I volunteer at a food pantry that also includes a clothing closet. I sometimes rescue items that are deemed unredeemable and end up in the trash. The clothing volunteers are on to me and pass along used jeans when not useful.
I now have a fairly substantial pile of old jeans, some already diassembled. I tried to disassemble more but, two bandaids later, I simply cut them apart. Next I made *fabric* by stitching pieces together.
My idea was to recover 8 cushions on my sunroom love seats. Ha!
2nd Attempt:
When I finished covering one cushion, I stopped. It did not look that great, honestly. And it took forever to piece together enough to cover a cushion. This surpirsed me. Not one to let go too easily, I converted it into this pillow:
3rd Attempt:
About a decade ago, we visited Spain on a tour. In Barcelona I became enamored of Gaudi, of course. How could I not? And I wanted fabric to remind me of Gaudi.
Tours like ours did not include fabric shopping. Instead I bought a tshirt with a Gaudi-esque print on the front. It was a too-small size but I liked the front print, so I bought it, figuring I could work it into something.
After capturing the maximum amount of fabric from the tshirt, I pulled out some thrifted tshirts acquired over the years, one of which I had used for another project, leaving me with less that one tshirt.
I selected the Odette pattern from the Sewing Workshop's Odette and Ivy. It's an interesting take on a tshirt with lots of assymetrical piecing.
My approach was to start with the focus fabric from my Gaudi tshirt. I wanted to use it as efficiently as possible while keeping the focus on it. It became the front piece.
I worked from there using first one and then another shirt to cut out the various pieces of the Odette. In the end I did not have a lot of choices. The sleeves and the lower band take a good bit of fabric. Then I spotted the bicycle and decided to incorporate that.
Next I began to cut apart the other tshirts, using parts for first the large pieces in the pattern, until I had each piece cut out. I enjoyed the process so very much. And I like that the funky bicycle made it into the final piece.
OK - bring on the bricolage!
