Crazy recycling!

Last weekend was my first weekend at college and was really enjoyable. There are six of us doing the first year of Creative Techniques and we all have blogs so you will be able to follow our progress from the links on this blog.
Our first topic for the machine embroidery unit was crazy patchwork and I have completed my samples.
The use of recycled materials is emphasised on this course so I decided to make a sample with my recycled shirts but using all the bits I don't use for quilting such as the collars, labels, cuffs, pockets etc.

The idea of the sample was to use automatic stitches on the sewing machine to embellish the edges of the crazy patchwork
The binding is made from the button bands
I really enjoyed making it and I love the result.

The second sample is paper patchwork which was a lot of fun! We did this with Lesley, our new teacher and although we were sceptical at first everyones sample turned out great.

We used an embossed type of brown paper which we coloured with wax crayon and decorated with the automatic machine stitches. Then we cut it up and made it into crazy patchwork with somerset paper which Lesley had coloured with food colouring.
I then added a handmade paper border and squared it off.

All our samples have to be the same size for this unit and I have chosen 10 inches square. I think that a square will work better than a rectangle such as A4.