Collage Quilting

I had a couple weeks off over the holidays and have been wanting to try collage quilting. I’ve been thinking about it for awhile and watching some videos, but had not taken the plunge yet to try. Over break, I made a couple of good attempts.

I woke up one morning and decided I was going to just make a simple fabric collage – I decided on an alien as my theme. I began by picking fabrics and ironing them to fusible interfacing, I believe I used Heat n Bond or something similar. I drew a template to follow, and cut shapes to match. I was not sure how to do this so I just laid out my shapes directly on a piece of background fabric. Here is the alien after I laid out the pieces and ironed it:

It turned out a little rough, but for my first attempt I like it. The small bits were a little fiddly but I think it looks nice. This is about 8×8 inches square. I then took it to my sewing machine and added some quilting (I have a thin batting and a backing fabric I layered together before quilting.

My backing fabric was not quite tall enough to fold over so the top and bottom are rough edged. It was just to try this out so I’m not too worried about it.

A few days later I had watched some more videos on youtube about the process, and decided I wanted to try again. Someone mentioned you can use parchment paper to lay out your fusibles and fuse them together, and then you can peel the whole thing off and lay it on your background. So that is what I decided to do.

I drew an octopus for this attempt:

My octopus is about 1.5 – 2 feet tall / 1.5 feet wide. I traced the template onto parchment paper, picked out fabrics and started ironing them all to the fusible interfacing. I then took pieces and attached them.

I decided I wanted him to be purple, and I tried to make sure I had a pile of lights, a pile of mid ranges, and a pile of darker fabrics so that I could try to give the composition some depth and shading. It took me a few hours, but this attempt went better I think than the alien. The pieces were a little larger so that was a little easier to work with. I did have some issues trying to shape the pieces along the tentacles (the exact curves, etc) so I ended up cutting out my drawing and using it as a cutting template to help with that. I thought also that I could maybe put fabrics together and then put the template on top and cut the design out afterward, but I wasn’t sure how the fused bits would hold together if I did that – so that is something I may try in the future.

Here is my completed collage. I have the parchment paper laid on the background fabric I decided to use here. I wanted something neutral and had just purchased a couple of yards of different neutral fabrics (with words or black and white neutral motifs).

Here is the octopus after I fused it to the background fabric. I have not quilted it yet, because that is another thing I want to experiment with before I attempt it on here. I have a couple of sewing machines, and one I bought specifically so I can keep my free motion embroidery foot on it (so I don’t have to keep changing the foot), and that is what I will eventually use I believe. I’m still really new to the free motion foot and how to use it effectively. I want to do some experiments on other fabric before I attempt to quilt the Octopus. I’d like to do shapes and things around it on the background portion, and maybe just the edges of the octopus. I just used my machine with a regular presser foot for the alien.

I really enjoyed doing these projects, so I’m sure I will be doing some more collage quilts / fabric collages in the future.

Homemade collage papers

I needed some more papers for my stash, so I made some this weekend.

A wide range of collage papers

I have been digging in my non-tissue paper stash recently, and realized most of the homemade neutral papers I had were made with ink. The ink I used is not waterproof. I use different glues depending on the project – if I’m using a glue stick it doesn’t really matter if the marks on the pages aren’t water proof, but I have been using a lot more matte medium lately and that will make colors run if they are not waterproof. Sometimes it screws up a piece because I’ll lose color saturation if my drawn marks run, or the color ends up in other places I didn’t want it to go. I decided I needed to make a bunch of neutral papers with acrylic paint, so that I won’t have this problem.

I have a large stash of scrap paper – essentially recycling copy or inkjet paper that I had printed on previously. I prefer to work with copy paper over thicker drawing paper because it seems to glue best for me. I took several sheets of those old printed papers and made a bunch of marks on the back, first with black paint, then grays, then brown or browny-gray. I tried to vary the marks so I have a nice variety to work with. They range from geometric shapes or lines to circles and more organic shapes, to dabbed dots. I used different paint brushes, some homemade mark-making tools, sponges, and daubers. I even took a spray bottle and squirted a couple of pages when the paint was still wet to get it to run, and this gave some more interest to those pages.

Now I have a lot more neutral-colored collage papers to work with.

Neutrals in collage

I talked in a recent post about using tissue papers in my collage work. I had recently just taken a bunch of tissue papers and drew on them so that I had some overlays ready for collage work. I drew some different marks, such as eye shapes and some leaves, circles, and other shapes, in different sizes so I would have a nice variety of papers. I used some of these in some recent, neutral palette works.

This first piece is called Porcelain, since the colors reminded my husband and I of some porcelain cups that we have. This piece is all tissue papers, including the drawn marked ones and some gel plate prints, over a paper-covered wooden background. It’s about 5 inches by 5 inches.

This second piece is just called Neutrals Collage. I used some of my marked up tissue papers and then some non-transparent collage papers layered in. I really enjoy how layering tissue papers adds more depth to the piece. This piece is on a paper-covered canvas. It’s about 5 inches x 7 inches.

Sketchbook collage 12/13/25

Here is a new sketchbook page I made yesterday. My process (for most of my art) is to work intuitively, and just let the collage happen on its own without much pre-planning. I started by just picking some colors, I was going for green and teal, but I didn’t have any collage papers in teal. So I went for blue and green instead. I grabbed out 5 different papers from my homemade collage paper stash. I also found a picture with someone’s face and so that kind of set the tone at the end with all the eyes. I finished with some Posca pens at the end. I’m really drawn to eyes and they show up in my work a lot. I like how this turned out.

Sketchbook Collage 12/6/25

I have been playing with some stuff I’ve learned recently, or relearned. I really like the transparency that tissue paper provides when you layer it in a collage. I have used it in the past a lot but had not used it in a long time. I was reintroduced to it by the class I referenced in my last post, and also by a youtube video I watched recently, showing how to do botanical prints using a gel plate on tissue papers. Those can then be layered in collage. This sketchbook page was fun to make and used tissue paper (and botanical prints I made with my gel plate). I also used water soluble crayons, construction paper, and other collage papers I have made in the past.

Learning new things

I love taking classes through a site called Fibre Arts Take Two, a company out of Australia that has several online classes with teachers all over the world. I’ve taken several of their classes in the last few years. I recently took a class taught by Cordula Kagemann, a collage artist from Germany. I learned several new techniques and had a lot of fun with this class. Here are a few collages I made from this class.

Mini collages for a 100-day project

I had started a 100 day project in the early summer of 2025 as part of some facebook challenge. We were sewing small textile hand-stitched collages. I think I got to day 40 and life just got in the way. Maybe I’ll try again in 2026. Below are some of my favorites: