Fabric As Art

Most sewers have at least a small (medium? large? hoarder size?) stash of fabric, waiting to be used in future projects. I have fabrics that I love but most of them are tucked away until the perfect project comes to mind. When I look through my stash, I’m reminded of how beautiful they are, how much I like them, and how much I love seeing them, touching, and thinking about the possibilities they offer for creating something that doesn’t exist yet.

Holiday Shopping

If you read my blog from the 2022 holiday season, you know that I indulged in a Black Friday fabric shopping trip. I hadn’t used any of the fabrics I bought, but I really like looking at them so I decided to make a simple art piece with a few of them. When I walk into my sewing space from the outside, I have a space that just looked empty so I added a narrow table and then created a piece of fabric art to go above it. This post covers the basic steps I used to design and create this. It took less than an afternoon and now I can enjoy my fabrics every day.

Fabric Selection

Six pieces of my lightweight canvas fabrics shared a color scheme of navy, taupe, and cream, so I designed a pieced panel using using one piece each of five of them and 2 pieces of the sixth fabric. I bought a gallery canvas, 48″ x 36″, which was a great size to fill that blank wall space behind the door. Designing the panel was easy using graph paper to draw rectangles that fit together to make one large panel. If you create your own piece of fabric art, add 6″-8″ to the height and width of the canvas dimensions. This gives you extra fabric to wrap the finished panel around the stretched canvas and staple it to the back.

Simple Seams

I started near the center, stitching the large navy rectangle to the narrow striped fabric. Next, I added the floral piece across the bottom. The two pieces at the top were sewn together before sewing them to the previously stitched panels. All that was left to was to sew the two side pieces to the center pieced panel. After giving it a good pressing, I was ready to stretch it around the canvas and staple it in place. There are two good things about this project. My desk faces the door so I get to look at it all day long. And if, in the future, I want to make something else with these fabrics, I can easily take it apart and use it in a different way!

Let me know if you try this with your fabrics. I’d love to see photos, so please share!