Roses in a Basket | susies-scraps.com

Roses in a Basket – The Beginning

Hello Dear Friends and Readers.

As you will know by now, I do love scrap pieces of fabric. Actually, I’ve been saving a basket of scraps for a very long time. The scraps are small and useless looking, not even suitable for making my “End Of Day” Quilter’s Baskets. You can read more about these in the link below.

End of Day Quilters Basket

This basket of scraps may seem useless but I have had a plan. The thing is, again, they are already cut, from many different fabrics, so I don’t have to go and hunt though or start cutting, because my plan has been to use these little scraps for quilted fabric collage.

I’ve long been inspired by the Japanese tradition of Boro which encompasses the idea of not wasting fabric and stitching it, for practical purposes into existing fabric and clothing to preserve its life.

This methodology has inspired my idea for a stitched collage.

So the other day, when I had a piece of left over one-sided fusible interfacing, I thought the time has come. My piece of interfacing measures approximately 8″ x 12″ (in case you would like to make one too) I turned on the iron, got out my basket of scraps and started laying the scraps on the interfacing. The scraps are right side up and they can be overlapped a little too. I tried to choose scraps with a lighter palette. Once I made an arrangement I liked, and all the interfacing was covered, I ironed them on.

Then I delved into the basket and cut out small pieces of pink roses and some tan plaid for the basket. I used a glue stick to position them in place, off centre, to the right side of the piece. (There is a reason for this, I will share with you later)

I added a few squares of fabric to the background where I thought it wasn’t covering the interfacing sufficiently.

Once they were in place, I cut a piece of coarse linen I had already, and cut it slightly larger to be the backing.

Now for some hand stitching.

I used some 100% cotton DMC threads to do the stitching, Tan for the basket, pale pink for the background of the roses, red to outline the roses and then cream for the background.