My husband and I are well stuck into our current isolation, and we’re glad our house is large enough to allow us to have our own spaces. Otherwise, we’d be tripping over each other. Of course one of my main spaces is my studio, where I spend at least a few hours each day.
If you think I’ve been sewing up a storm you’re wrong. I’ve been paper and fabric collaging, and finishing up two black and white pieces. Why collage? One of my studio clean up projects was to sort through pages ripped from magazines. That led to watching a few videos and then collaging on the blank sides of sketchbook pages. I also created more colored tissue paper to use up some almost empty bottles of Dylusions ink sprays. Some of the papers are lovely; others are a bit muddy.
Lessons learned:
Magazine pages really like to wrinkle when glued, despite smoothing with fingers and old credit card
I need to learn how to use acrylic paint better
Lay down a colored background before you start collaging as it’s hard to add after the fact
Already fused fabric is easy to collage and can be pried off with heat and moved around (something impossible with glue)
Here are my efforts to date.
I hope to improve my collage skills over the next few weeks, once I figure out the right glue(s) to use. Collages are good design exercises.
The black and white pieces I made with my mark making class output are also experiments. One is more successful than the other, but I learned from both.
Finally, I did make a few masks to have on hand for personal use. I’ve wavered about the whole homemade mask enterprise as I’m concerned many won’t be useable. Sewers respond generously to such requests, but there’s a lot of room for good intentions to go astray. Elastic doesn’t hold up well to commercial laundering. The proliferation of patterns is confusing to me. Some have a pocket for a filter. My local hospital prefers the masks be lined with flannel. Other hospitals want nose shaping wires sewn in.
I’ll see if requirements and need for masks change before I make more. As I usually do, I’m linking up with Off The Wall Fridays.
The Snarky Quilter 
Love how you are using this time to experiment. Most inspiring.
This is what happens when I start organizing my saved magazine pages. I thought the collages would be faster than working with fabric, but I find I am still using fabric, just leftover scraps already lined with fusibles. Well, I’m putting still more leftovers to work.
The second collage is my favorite; I think I am partial to motion.
That one is made up of small fused fabric scraps, so I had to give them some direction.
I’m holding off on making masks. Instead, I’m making quilts for my guild’s programs – QOV, foster kids, School for the Deaf, etc.. I’m not the fastest, so my efforts are going to quilts. Also making some family quilt gifts, too. If we stay busy, we can maintain a better level of sanity during this crisis.
I hear you about staying busy. I’m even doing daily limerick writing with a small group. Each day we get a word prompt and off we go.
It does get confusing. Our quilt guild talked to 2 hospitals to find out what they wanted and that is what we are making. Anything will beat nothing.
One issue may be that the hospitals where I live go through their volunteer programs to handle mask questions,and the person running those programs may simply go online to look for instructions.
Our guild got the info and I found out city employees and the smaller First Responders don’t have the access the bigger ones do.
Current thinking on personal mask wearing may enlarge the audience for homemade ones.
It is here. Told hubby I was making him one that says “Grumpy Old Man”.
I just made another set for my husband and me.
Awesome