Textile Tuesday: A Challenge

The Brown Paper Bag Challenge.

Thanks to Tracey of Yarn and Pencil, I have joined in the #brownpaperbagchallenge that is running on Instagram at the moment and in the Facebook Group ‘Stitch Meditations’.  It is the fabulous idea of Anne Marie Desaulniers.

Tracey alerted me to this by tagging me on IG, and I am very glad she did.

Another form of Scrap Happiness, another form of fabric collage

The idea is to put fabric scraps into a brown paper bag, without thinking about it  – just any old bit of fabric lying around small enough to fit in the bag. There is a video on Vimeo by Liz Kettle demonstrating the approach.

Then just pick out pieces without looking and make a small collage

Then stitch.

I cut up part of an old sheet into 4 inch squares and the first thing that happened was that I got caught up in the collaging, so instead of just doing one, I went on to do 4 before I felt like stitching.

And now I just pick up any one of the 4 and do a bit of stitching at odd times in the day. It is really very relaxing. I often do it while the kettle boils. The artist Fran White has done a whole series of sketches and paintings based on that very premise. I met Fran at the Seawhite Studio last year. I have been fascinated by the development of her journey with her #whilethekettleboils series.

This square is turning into a mixed media piece

with a piece of ‘colour catcher’ paper in the middle and I am thinking of adding some of the orange plastic mesh onion bag. I might also add some beads and/or buttons, we’ll see – the piece will tell me as I go along.

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Have you seen any interesting textiles, are you on a fabric fun adventure or will you have a go at the Brown Paper Bag Challenge? – put a link in the comments if you would like to share any textiles this Tuesday – links to archive posts welcome.