Miniature Mosiacs Session 3: Position the Fabric Tiles in Motifs

Okay, so now I'm ready to start placing all of my fabric tiles. I've got my colors that I plan on working with. I'm going to be using these warmer colors, the yellow, the oranges, and the reds, in my heart, and then I'm going to be using the cooler colors, the purples and the greens and the blues, in my background. The very first thing I'm going to do is pin my pattern to my sandwich, and it's gonna give me a nice edge to work against to keep my design in the heart and to get a nice heart shape. It's also going to be sort of a template that I can use to cut curve with so that the edge of my fabrics fit inside the curve of the heart and the point of the heart. But the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put this cross in here with my yellow fabrics, and so I'm just going to cut some squares that are all about an inch or so square from a variety of the yellows. And you see that I'm just eyeballing that inch, because I know it doesn't have to be perfect and I know that perfect isn't going to serve me well, because if it's too perfect, it's not going to look like a mosaic. So keep telling yourself that, especially you perfectionists out there, keep saying that imperfect's going to look better. Remind yourself of that. That's the same. So after I've cut a few, I'll start placing. All right. So I'm gonna start here on this edge and so that's the very first thing I wanna show you is that you can see that this has a little bit of a curve to it here. So I'm gonna set that right on that curve and I'm gonna take a pencil and I'm gonna draw that curve right there. So you can see I've drawn that curve, and then I'll cut that curve, and that's really gonna help give my heart shape. Now I wanna make sure that I cut off that pencil mark, because there's no way to really remove it. So now you can see that that is fitting in that curve pretty well, and now I'm just gonna work all the way across here, leaving approximately the same amount of distance between each piece. Now you can see how fabulous this looks when they're not perfectly straight. You get this wonderful play of movement in that grout, if you will. You can see that they're not all exactly the same length, and that's good too. They don't need to be exactly the same length. They're not exactly the same width. Now, when I get over here, I don't really want a little tiny piece there, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna reduce this one a bit, 'cause it was kind of thicker than the rest. I'll put it back in place and then move these over, and that gives me plenty of room to put another one here. And I'm gonna do the same thing here that I did over there, I'm gonna put this in place and then I'm gonna use my pencil to draw my curve. Cut out directly on that line. Now, this is something I'm gonna tell you and I hope that you really hear what I say to you right now. Okay? I am going to iron this lightly, and the reason I say lightly is because, if for some reason, I want to be able to reposition these, I wanna be able to pull it off. If I were to lay that iron down there for a long time, there's no way I would get those off because this Mistyfuse wants to stick really, really well. So I'm simply gonna take my iron and tap it there, kind of in the middle of each of these, and that's gonna keep them in place so they don't move about constantly as I'm doing the next portion. But if I needed to pull that off, I could, and that's what I want is something so that I can remove it if I have to. And so now I'm gonna do a line this way, but this line I think I'm gonna curve. This one's nice and straight and this one I'm gonna do curvy. So I'm going to build off of this portion right here and move upwards. And, again, I'm going to be using that edge there to cut that shape or not. I might make this line escape the heart. So I think what I'll do instead is simply place a piece here and here, not cut that off, and let that kind of escape later. So I think I'll just tap those two down like so, so they'll stick in place there, and now I'm gonna work this way and put a curve in. So I know that I'm gonna have to cut some more fabric, I'll do that now. Again, I'm working with that approximate one inch square-ish. Some of you might be looking at it and going, well, those look more like rectangles. It doesn't matter. They're square-ish. I could have made them all long rectangles. It's just whatever I wanna do. Okay, now I'm gonna start curving this through here, and because I'm doing that, I need these to have some angles to them on these sides, so I'm gonna cut this first angle a bit. So you see, I've just angled this one side, and so I need to angle this side also or see if that just works and it does, but I know I'm gonna need to angle this side. So I'm gonna cut an angle there, like so, and that's how I yield a curve is by cutting angles. This one doesn't need to be cut, it's already got a nice angle happening at this point. And, again, I'm gonna let this escape here and kinda make a line through the background. So the next one I put down, I'll let it come over the edge here and not worry about it and I will just tack these down with the iron. Whoops. Put that back down. Okay, so now I've got my wonderful yellow cross done. All right, so the next thing I'm going to do is the outside edge of the heart, and once I've done that, I can remove my pattern here, because I will yield that shape. Here in my drawing, I thought about doing some long rectangles as that edge, but I think instead I'm just going to do some squares, but much smaller than these squares. And I think what I'm going to do is kind of move from the reds, or the red-violets, into the reds and then into the oranges, as I get into the middle. So I'm gonna start with these red-violets and take my pile here, and I already have some little scraps that I can use. And I'm gonna cut now about half-inch squares, and that's what I'm gonna use all the way around the outside edge of the heart. And I just want a variety of the red-violet. That's more of a red, so I'm gonna save that for later. That's more of a red too. So anything that is gonna go in the next layer, I'll just set aside, and then once I have a nice variety of this red-violet cut, I can start laying things out. This one's nice 'cause it's got lots of different red-violets on it. So you can see by my pile here that I've got a variety of sizes of squares. They're not all exactly the same size and that's good, not bad. It's a good thing. And now I think we're just about ready to start playing. I have a nice variety here. Okay. These are a pair of tweezers and tweezers can really come in handy for placing small pieces, and so if you feel like your hands feel clumsy and you can't really get them to get the little tiny pieces where you want them, feel free to grab yourself a pair of tweezers. I'm gonna go ahead and put another pin in here 'cause this wants to lift up. There we go. And I'm gonna start laying these out on one of the straightaways here. So, use tweezers if you want, and I'm gonna go ahead and play with positioning here and decide whether or not things need to be cut with a curve along that edge, which I don't think they do, on this edge. But you can see immediately that I need to cut an angle here and I just eyeball that angle. There is no perfect angle. The next one doesn't need it. This one probably doesn't need it either. So now I'm just gonna go ahead and position fabrics all along here and all the way around. I'm gonna get them as close to the edge of my pattern as possible and I'm gonna try to keep about the same distance between them, and, remember, that is about the same distance. So that I have about the same amount of black showing in between each little unit. I don't care if I've got little strings, they can be cut off later. Okay, so now I have this pieced down in here and I know I'm gonna be coming up here, so I'm gonna go ahead and lay down this portion here that's gonna go against this wall of the heart and then determine what I'm gonna do down here in this portion. So this guy's a little wide to get two pieces in there, so I'm gonna narrow him down and there's one narrow piece, and then I'll probably put this narrow piece, okay. So if I put that narrow piece, he's too long I'm gonna shorten him a bit. And this is just when you start doing some finagling, right? I don't want those two necessarily touching, so I'm gonna shorten this one also and make it a little bit shorter in length too. Put it there. Okay, so now I've got this portion down here to deal with, and, as far as I'm concerned, that's gonna be two triangles, one short triangle. So I'm gonna take this guy here and cut it in half, and then probably cut it a little narrower, and I'm just eyeballing it by how I see that space there. Put that in there, see if I like the way that looks. And I'm gonna change the angle of this a bit to go with the angle of that triangle. And I'm just kind of basically nudging things in there so that they fit. There we go. And that's when these come in handy, so I can kind of position that in there, and I like that. So now I need a long triangle down here so I'm gonna find a color I like and I'm gonna cut a longer triangle here. See how that fits. Perfect. And there's the bottom of my heart, and I'm gonna look and see how all my spacing is going. See if I like the way things are spaced, make any little adjustments, and then I'm gonna iron that in place. Okay. Now that I have this in place and I've started building on this, I can go ahead and iron things down really well. I don't think I'm gonna be changing anything at this point, so I'm gonna go ahead and do a full press. Whoops. And this is when most products would ask you to use, I don't wanna press that down, would ask you to use steam, and so I am using steam. I'm gonna lift this up real quick 'cause I did not want that to go down on that pattern. There we go. Okay. All right, so now I'm gonna continue on with this outline of this heart. If you come across a piece that looks like it's lost its iron-on adhesive, make sure that you put some behind there. Okay, so now I know I'm gonna be needing something that's kind of got a special cut in there or is the right length. So this is a much longer piece. I'm gonna take that one out and put this longer piece in here first. I'll narrow it out just a bit, and then I'm gonna cut an angle in it and go ahead and put it in there. There we go. And then I can fit another little piece right in there. And I think it's time for some lighter pink. Let me put that guy in. There we go. Now, the longer you do this, the more you'll get used to about how big to cut a piece. You'll be able to look at the space there and go, oh yeah, I need a piece about this size. When you first start doing it, you'll be cutting things a little too big and a little too small and having to make more adjustments, but after you've done it a little bit, you'll be able to get a better feel for it. So, again, now I'm gonna make sure that I like the distances in between, how much black is showing between each piece, and then I can go ahead and iron down. You can put down your Teflon pressing sheet if you want to to make sure that you don't do what I just did there, get anything out of place or get iron-on adhesive where you don't want it. And now we're gonna do the more difficult portions. Now, I'm gonna turn this around so that it's closer to me as I'm working, and we're gonna be dealing with this curve all the time, and so we're gonna need our pencil again so that we can mark that curve and make our cuts. Before I do that, I'm gonna go ahead and cut a few more squares so that I have some better variety here. So I'll begin here next to this yellow, determine whether or not I think this needs to be cut, but I don't think it does, but I know for certain that next one is going to need to be cut. So I'll take the next fabric I plan on using, set it in position where I want it, and then draw where I'm gonna clip. So I'm gonna just cut off this little corner here, and it should give me a nice little curve there. Remember to cut off your mark, because otherwise you won't be able to get it off. Okay, now, as I do this, there's so many different ways that I can make this corner. But, for me, I like to keep the corner about as wide this way away from the edge as I have everything else, so I know I'm gonna be cutting this at quite an angle. So I'm gonna lay down my next piece right here. It's gonna cover this piece here a bit and that's gonna show me where to cut this piece. So I'm gonna cut that piece right, whoops, right there. And this one, probably just cut the little corners off, so I don't even really need to mark that. I'm just gonna kind of cut a little bit a curve to each of those corners, just the tiniest little bit of curve. And then this one, I am going to cut on that line like so. Put that one back in place, and then put this one in place. Ah, there we go. So we have this nice curve starting to happen. We're gonna be cutting a bit of this off now with the next piece. So I'll take the next piece I'm gonna put down, put it down where I want it, and mark what I'm gonna cut off of the previous piece, right there. And I know I'm gonna cut just a little bit of curve off of this too. So just a little bit here and a little bit there. Cut this guy, cutting off my mark, putting that back in place, and then putting that in place. So you can see, this is really easy. You don't have to have templates or anything for this. You're just gonna be using this edge and the edge of the new piece against the old piece or the old tile to tell you how to lay down the new one. So this guy here is gonna have quite a bit of curve in him. I don't like that little piece, so I'm just gonna cut that little bit off. So I'm gonna lay it down here and what I'm going to do is decide right away that it's not long enough, so I'll get a different piece. Here we go. This one is long enough, and I want it to fill in this whole space. So we're gonna cut off this portion of this guy, and just, again, the little corners of this guy. So the little corners and that angle right there. Put this one back and put this one in place, and there is that whole portion of the heart. Again, I can iron. And our finish up here, this is a really tight angle, so it's gonna be important for you to see how that works and whether it's a heart or a butterfly or a flower or whatever it is, if it's got hard angles like this, whatever I do with this, you can do in those other things. The very first thing I'm going to do is I'm gonna put down this fabric that's gonna go down here on this area here. And what I really like to do is take that fabric, whatever I'm gonna put there, and just kinda leave it there for the time being so that I can determine how I'm gonna handle that point after I start working. So the first thing I need to do is fill in this little bit here. And, again, remember that I like this width, whoops, that just came right off, this width, how big, how wide it is from here to here, so let's iron that in place real quick. That's a thicker fabric than the others and probably requires a little bit more heat to get through. There we go. Okay, so I wanna make sure I have this width, so I think I'm gonna put my square about like, so and I'm gonna cut it this way. So I'm just going to sort of eyeball that and make my mark and then do my first cut, like so, and then put it back in place here. Now, you can see that this fabric here is a little bit shorter than this fabric here, so what I'm gonna do is I'm simply gonna lift this one up and cut it a little bit shorter so it's the same length as this one here. So I'm just gonna cut a bit of that off so that it doesn't give me a problem, and that's another reason why not doing a complete press is good. So now this fits there a whole lot better. See that? Okay. So here, stay in place. I'm gonna iron that down so that it doesn't keep moving on me, that little tag. And come in here with my next piece, and this piece is gonna help me determine how I'm gonna handle that corner. So if I set this guy down here, I want it to continue this heart shape, but I want it to go into that corner. And that tells me right now that, if this piece were a little bit longer, I could probably cut it at an angle right here, and then I could do the same thing with the piece over there. So that's exactly what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get a longer piece, and I probably don't have one that's long enough here, so I'll just cut a piece that's about an inch wide and I'm gonna set it down here, like so, and then I'm gonna cut this, or draw this line here and a line right there, and a line that goes right across here. So hopefully you can see this pencil mark. Basically what I'm doing is a long piece of fabric here. Now I don't know that I want this whole thing to be all this one fabric. It would be very, very easy to make this a second piece here, so I think that's probably what I'll do, but I'm gonna cut that out first and show you how it fits in there. Remember to cut off any marks that you make. I say that over and over again, because you know I've left on marks and then later wished those marks weren't there. So you can see how that fits in there, and I could leave it like that, but I can easily see a square here too. So instead, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut this off, cut that square right there off, and put that in position right there, and I'm gonna put a different fabric square in here. I think maybe some bright pink. And I can see that's a little smaller than some of my squares, so we'll see there. There we go. And I think that's much more interesting. Now, what's cool is that whatever shape this is is the shape that needs to go on the opposite side. So I can take this and I can lay it right side down on another piece of fabric and use that basically as my little guide, and I'm gonna cut and cut, and I have about the same shape, not exactly, but about, and lay that in place and then lay that in place, and so now I have the other side started for my heart. Make sure I have the right distance I want between each of my fabrics and then iron these guys in place. I'm gonna cut this down just a bit. And I want this to be as close to the edge of my fabric pattern as possible so I get the full size of my heart. So that's looking good and we'll iron that down. Whoops. There always has to be somebody misbehaving. Okay, so now you understand how to do a difficult corner like that. I'm gonna go ahead and just start filling in some of these areas here and then I'll just work and finish some of those other areas too. Basically, I'm gonna be doing the same thing, but I'm gonna be moving down in scale and size and I'm gonna be changing color. I'm gonna be moving into some red and then into some orange into the center. So I'm gonna start with some red, and my pieces are just a little bit smaller. Again, I'm gonna pay attention to the any curve I have, so this needs to have a little curve cut of it. And I know that I'm gonna be cutting this angle when I lay my next piece down, so here's my next piece. I'll use my pencil again to mark that angle here, and I know I'm gonna need to cut those little corners off a bit, so that's the next row in. I'm really liking this gradation of color. And then the next row in is going to be orange, as I move into that yellow. Maybe some red-orange. Again, I'm working smaller than the previous size, and you don't have to do that, that's just what I decided I kinda wanted to do is get smaller as I move in. So this variegation is gonna add some really wonderful interest to the piece, instead of using the same color throughout the whole heart, having it variegate from one color into another. Okay. So orange. Actually, I think I'll put that bright, bright orange in there and kinda go for the red oranges out here. More of a red-orange. Let's see. That's more of a red-orange. Okay, so now I'm gonna have to cut an angle on something, one of these or the other, so I think I'll put this about right there. Set that one there, and it'll tell me where to cut that angle. I don't really need to mark it, I can just eyeball it, and it's gonna need its edges curved. So I'm gonna curve its outer edges. And this curve is a little bit more of a curve than the curves have been before. Put that in there, see how we like it. Actually, I want this angle to be a little bit greater. And, again, it's just playing. If it's a tiny little piece, if you mess it up, cut yourself another tiny little piece. Okay, that orange is still working. It's gonna be a little bit too big, so I'll have to cut it down eventually, but I'm not quite there yet so I need a piece here. I'm gonna find another redder orange. Here we go, or at least darker orange. And it's gonna go here. There we go, and it's gonna need its corner cut off or something's gonna need to be cut off. So I think I'm gonna cut off of this top. This little guy, he's gonna really have a lot cut off of him to make him fit in that corner. There we go. There, there, there. So this guy just needs to be reduced just a bit. I believe that should do it, and there we go. So that whole corner of our heart is ready to go. I'm gonna change this angle, just ever so slightly so that I get a little bit more consistent of black in there. There we are, and now we're ready to press that in place and move on to the rest of our heart. All right, so we're gonna cut some more pieces of fabric and we're gonna start filling in the rest of the heart now.