I think my love of a natural-edge ripped fabric comes from my love of the natural deckle edge of paper.

I haven’t tried a natural fabric hanging in my work yet.  But I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.

So, here we are. Long holiday weekend. Lots of heat and lots of rain. Lots of reasons to go into the studio and try something new.

Here’s my vision: I want to create a wall-hanging on natural canvas. Unlike a quilt: No binding. No batting. Collage construction. Stitching? Probably.

I invested in some heavy cotton canvas and ripped it to a size I thought I would enjoy working. This will finish out to be about 24” x 42”. I prepped with a wash of white latex housepaint, watered down and applied with a natural sponge.

When I ripped the canvas, it had a mind of its own and ripped in the opposite direction in a few places. OK. Now I’ll let that be part of the piece.

I’m designing this work mostly from fabrics I already have on-hand. I’m not sure how the actual construction and presentation will work. I might need to tweak the plan if I decide to create more of these. So, using up pieces I have takes some pressure off. I haven’t created a lot of yardage that I’m in love with and will really regret using if I don’t like the final result.

I started by trying out some fabrics in different configurations.

Then I decided to unify a section with a screen-printed pattern. Same pattern on fabrics near one another. I picked a tree limb screen and printed with dark blue-black.

The top sections are loose and organic, suggesting sky and water. Now I’m creating a shape-filled bottom section, using a dividing line in complementary color and then the limb-printed sections.

Tip for collaging; Working on either paper or fabric, it really helps to tape your substrate down to a working board.  Tape all sides securely. Both paper and fabric wrinkle when they are wet, and the acrylic medium I use for glue will be wet. You’ll notice the wrinkling-bubbling problem the most when you are collaging on only one part of the substrate with another section un-glued. The varying surface tensions of your piece will start fighting with each other.

So far, this heavy canvas is acting like a champ. Nice and smooth!

Here is where I left it at the end of the day.

Things I like: the variety of forms. The color palette. The looseness.

Things that still need to happen: Tying it all together once the parts are collaged. From my experience creating a lot of paper collages, I have come to define this stage as “oh-no-it-doesn’t-look-good-be-calm-don’t-panic” stage. There’s still plenty of opportunity to work on the surface with paint, stitch and other mark-making. It doesn’t have to look done yet.

Stay tuned. I’ll share how this develops and how it turns out in coming weeks.

I also enjoy creating paper collaged works. If you’d like to take a look at some of these collaged works, please visit my website here:

https://www.bobbibaughstudio.com/wednesday-collage/

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

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