Mixed Media Session 5: Done and Ready to Hang

So though I haven't finished all my stitching, I do want to walk you through those finishing touches and I wouldn't do the putting on of this really heavy hanging apparatus until everything else was stitched on because it weighs about four pounds, maybe even five pounds, and it would constantly be pulling on this when I was stitching other things. I probably wouldn't do that until I'm done with all the other stitching. But I wanted to show you some of my ideas about how its going to go down. One other thing that's important to me is that it does have a true square here so that this corner here is a true 90 degree corner, and I want to make sure that I had that square to the piece. And so this portion down here is hanging down at an angle, and I want this to be going straight, and this angle to be nice, and so I want to make sure its on there true. So I can't really that until I've trued up these edges. So I'm going to talk about that a bit. Now you can see here that I've got very little here in the middle of this excess fluff right here, and so that's what I'm gonna use as a guide and have all my excess fluff that goes around on this inner portion be about that length. And so I'm simply going to come in and anything that's a lot longer than that and I'm just gonna kind of cut it down. I don't care that its straight, that is not my intent, my intent is that its about the same amount, straight doesn't really bother me one way or another because we're gonna fringe all of this out. I just want it to be about this same length that I've got here, maybe a little bit longer, cause that's a little tight. So I'm gonna leave that length there, but as I go around here, this is nice here, but here's got very long bits, so I'll cut that. And I'll do the same thing here in this corner, cut this down just a bit, not too much. And it does tend to be the corners that get a little big and the concaves in here that get a little bit short, and I'm gonna do this corner just a bit. So that's the interior portion. Now I'm gonna look at the exterior portion, and I'm gonna find the narrowest bit there too, and that's right here, and its basically just a little bit longer than everything else, so that's pretty simple. I'm just gonna go in here and cut this backing fabric a little bit longer than the front fabric, and again like I said, it doesn't have to be tidy, you could do this with your rotary cutter if you wanted to, but I like to do it a little bit rougher than that. If I were in my own studio, I'd probably use a bigger pair of scissors, but this is not a bad thing. So I'm just cutting it about the same, a little bit longer, just cutting down a lot of its bulk. And this is going to give me something that's much truer to square then I had just now. Okay, so I can already see that I'm doing much better. Whoops, this bottom part here, I don't like that there. Let's get this last side, its a little too long. Okay, and now I'm gonna be using my awl again, and you can use any poky apparatus, you can use your seam ripper, you can use a needle or something. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna come along this edge and I'm gonna pull the fibers out of this top piece here, and I'm gonna fray this to the stitching, to the stitch line. And there's gonna be areas that there's more fibers that come out because its not on grain and it doesn't matter, if it were on grain they would come out all the way across, but it just doesn't matter because the fray takes care of that not being on grain, and any trimming that we do later, if there's any long bits and pieces hanging out, we'll take care of anything that's too uneven. And so you see that these are going to end wherever they meet the stitch. Okay, so now I'm gonna come in with my scissors and just trim those long bits about the same length as everything else that's sticking out on that level, this inter fabric level. And there we go, that top edge there, and so while I'm here at this top edge, I'm now going to do the back fabric. And I'm gonna get it to start fraying, pull out, and you're gonna find that the cross-wise grain pulls easier than the width-wise and you just never know which way you've got it on here. You could have one on one direction and one on the other and one's easy to fray and the other one isn't. And this fray, again, you can cut it down and have it be whatever you want it to be when you're ready, it doesn't have to be as long as it ends up here. You can trim it, but it will only fray down to where you've stitched all the way around the piece several times, and that's why we stitch around it several times. So I've got that good and frayed in most of that area. And then I'll cut these off again at about that same length. And so that's that whole top edge nicely frayed, and I always fluff it up a bit. And so I'm gonna get all of this frayed, and then I'm gonna go ahead with my rotary cutter and trim it so that its all got about a quarter of an inch or so of fringe all the way around it, which is what I did with this piece. So you can see here that we've got that wonderful fringe all the way around, that's all about the same length, and that gives us that wonderful kind of natural, funky edge, and so we'll be doing the same thing with this one, when we're all finished. So I'm gonna bring this baby back in now that I know that this is true, and what's true is not the outside edge here, what I can see now that is true is this inside line where I've stitched, that's what I'm gonna use as my straight edge. And so this is gonna go down right along that straight edge there. And about like so. And now I need to determine how I want to sew this on. I will glue it in place first, so I will put my glue on the underside of this, because that hits the bottom, and this hits the fabric too, so anything I know is gonna hit the fabric I'm gonna put glue on. So I'll glue that in place, make sure its perfectly straight, and let it dry. Once its dry, then I can come in and do my stitching. And so what I think I'm gonna do, is I'm gonna kind of follow suit with some of the Xs that I did down here, because we kind of have this zigzag design here that mimics the idea of an X, which is cool, but I'll probably do that like here, maybe I'll put two Xs here, and one X here, or maybe I'll put an X here, and an X here, and two Xs here and an X here or something like that, but I think I'll keep the Xs over here because over here we have these straight lines that come across. Then we have the line that goes here that breaks those up, but I think I can keep my stitches so that I put a stitch right here with that line, a stitch with that line, a stitch with that line, a stitch with that line, and I'll do that all the way across right here. Once that's done, and these Xs are put in here, and the Xs are put in there, then I'm gonna lift it up and test it. If I feel like its sturdy enough, I'll probably leave it alone. But if I don't feel like its sturdy enough, which there's a chance that that's gonna be the case, then I'll probably come in here and stitch from here to here several times, and possibly from here to here several times, because this is very, very heavy and I need something to make sure that that is gonna be sturdy on the top of that. Once that's done, I can basically say, well, I think I can hang from right here, its not directly in the center, but I don't think that its gonna be so off center that it won't be able to get this hanging true. If I feel like that's gonna be an issue, then I might just put a hanging apparatus on the back and have my nail sitting in here just to support this when its on the wall. But I think that I can get it to hang true, and if I can't I can always put a nail here and a nail there in between the two of those, get it to hang perfectly straight on the wall. So that's something you always want to consider. But anyway, this is our almost finished mixed-media quilt assemblage. I hope that you had fun going through this little journey with me. And that you'll make lots of these, and you'll start to see things differently when you find wonderful little bits of old things and know that you can bring them into your studio and make them into wonderful new things.