When you’re involved in creating your own art quilt fabric designs, dress art, or embellishments on ready-to-wear clothing, you may find it difficult to remember what works and what doesn’t. That’s when a cloth journal pays off. Like a writer’s journal or an artist’s sketchbook, a fabric swatch journal is the place to explore designs and techniques and serves as a creative reference tool.
Start with a couple of yards of pure white 100% cotton fabric. Wash with hot water and dry without using fabric softener. The prewash takes care of any fabric finish applied by the manufacturer and will pre-shrink the fabric. Then cut the yards into small sample sizes, either six- or eight-inch squares work best.
Find out which of your stamps and templates give you the best results. Gather all your stamps and stencils and clean them up if you used them for other craft projects. Using inexpensive fabric paints, use a different repeat design on each swatch or use a combination of stamps and stencils on your swatch squares. Try different color combinations, for example one color, two colors, all shades of one color, warm colors, cool colors, etc.
Get a preview of fabric dyeing techniques. Shibori are tie-dye or resistance-bound techniques that include folding and gathering, tight stitches in straight lines or patterns, and fabric tied to a pole. Resistances for dyeing include wax, such as in batik, washable school glue and flour paste (cold water dyes or paints only), and gutta or paint that remain on fabric and are used with fabric paints to prevent color from fading. bleeding in an area. to another.
Make mini-samplers. Test your stitches and embroidery techniques by hand by making mini-samplers. Reinforce cotton fabric squares with a lightweight fusible interface ironed on the back and you won’t need an embroidery hoop.
Once you have a stack of swatches, arrange them by technique or by color. You can tie them together on an edge like a book shape, or poke a small hole in the upper left corner and screw them into a metal o-ring found at office supply stores.
To create the most informative sample journal, mount each sample on a piece of card stock cut to the size of a ring binder. Write down details, such as the name of the technique or stitch, what dyes or paints were used, and any problems or successes you have had with a specific resistance.
Keeping a fabric journal helps you remember which fabric surface design techniques you like and which you might want to improve.