Recycled Blooms: More Quilting with Paper

Cloth Paper Scissors is one of my favorite magazines, and in the July/August 2007 edition, artist Kelli Perkins wrote an article on paper beads—and her beads were GORGEOUS! I HAD to make some… and I did. I found a few uses for them, but ended up storing them in a container that I squirreled away on a shelf, always meaning to do something with them... or to at least remind me to make them again. 

 

Early this year, I found that article and pulled out my little container of beads, a large-print cookbook (paper source), and all the supplies I needed and rolled a bunch of beads. Here are a few:

Embossed paper beads

Roll forward (pun intended) several months, and a member of my art quilting group asked me to draft a proposal for teaching a class for our quilt guild. Part of the class I proposed was about how to make these paper beads… and some other paper things, like paper clay buttons and beads. And when I demonstrated the beads for guild members so they'd know what they'd be making if they took the class, nearly everyone asked me, “What can you do with paper beads?” Good question!

So I used them to embellish a paper quilt, of course.

 

Here’s my first, accidental, paper towel quilt called Recycled Blooms (thusly titled because it’s made with 100% recycled materials). I call it an accidental quilt because I just kept testing techniques with paper towels and everything I did worked! I think I accidently stumbled on a new “material” with which to make art quilts (see my This Day blog post).

Recycled Blooms

Detail of the vase in Recycled Blooms

Back of Recycled Blooms

 

This little quilt (it's only 5-inches by 18-inches) has already juried in to a local art exhibit earlier this summer. The exhibit featured works by artists who are members of Austin Fiber Artists (http://austinfiberartists.com/) at the Dougherty Arts Center; and that was pretty awesome!

Here's the detail of the large-print book beads on Recycled Blooms:



Bead detail for Recycled Blooms Art Quilt

 

Thanks for visiting; see you next time! Paper on, y'all.