Mixed Media Session 1: An Introduction to Assemblage Art

When you begin this journey of creating an art assemblage that's on the surface of a quilt, you're going to need some pretty intriguing and interesting bits and pieces. So one of the first things I would suggest if you haven't started collecting those sorts of things is that you hit up some of your local secondhand stores. They're a great place to begin. You can also go to any type of store that sells vintage industrial pieces, old shop pieces, those sorts of things. Nails and screws are always fun. Washers are great, too. Bits and parts of old furniture, bits and parts of old machinery, any of those things are going to give you parts of a story that you can bring together and tell a new story with. So getting together a bunch of interesting items that may not seem related in the beginning, we can bring those together and use them to tell a new story with, and that's kind of what an assemblage is. It's creating a new idea out of old pieces. And this piece we started with a quilted base and that quilted base has to be strong enough to support things, so it can't be flimsy. So we're using an industrial stabilizer inside, and the quilting needs to support what's happening on the surface, but generally it needs to be pretty simple. What I wanted to do with this piece was to really highlight this photograph. I found this great photograph and I wanted to use it as my focal point for the piece. But I also wanted to use this, which is a hinge. I think it's probably art deco and it's very heavy iron, in fact. And so I used it as my hanger. The nails can go here and here on the wall, and the whole piece will hang from it. It will have a lot of decorative stitching on it too but not so much that it covers up the wonderful design on it. So everything that I put on here I wanted to use to augment my picture with, and I chose to put in a mixture of shapes but mostly in metal, I had this wonderful Rose that I think might've been a finial on something. I think it's copper. And these great pieces from old jewelry, and I bought a lot of old jewelry on eBay, and these were in there. Every time I'm choosing or looking at a piece, I have to think, "How is it going to go down on the surface? How can I attach it?" So when I saw these little urns that I had that are totally three-dimensional, I thought, you know, is there any way that I can put these on the surface? And I found out that it was going to be very easy. As soon as I started looking at it, I could figure it out. I think this was an old piece of jewelry also that I kind of pulled apart. So now it's in pieces and it's to be like this wonderful base for this vase to sit on. And I'm not sure what these were because they're pretty flimsy. I don't know if they ever could have been coat hangers or anything like that, but I'm gonna use them to hang some bits of ephemera from the bottom. Everything that I chose is there to show off that picture. It's there to augment that picture, if you will. The best thing I put on was this little metal frame. As soon as I highlighted her face instead of having the whole picture be the thing, it kind of changed it. And then when I added the decorative stitching it changed it again. So we're going to build a wonderful quilted assemblage today, and you don't need a whole lot of specialty things. The first thing you're going to need is a background fabric which is the front, a backing fabric, some sort of batting and I prefer a cotton or a natural. And then this is a product called Timtex, and it's available to almost any fabric store these days. And it's simply a very, very sturdy industrial stabilizer. I have put a little bit of iron-on adhesive between my batting and my stabilizer just to make them act more like one. And then I'll simply be quilting this. Now, one of the things that I really like to do is not have to bind. And so I'll choose a backing fabric that frays nicely and I will just top stitch that top of the quilt to the back of the quilt and then let that edge be natural and let it fray. I think it adds to, kind of, the vintage industrial type feel of the piece which is what I'm going for. Now in that sample, I didn't use any additional fabrics, but you can also bring in some additional fabrics. And these are some fabrics that I rusted with some old bits of metal, and I thought they would be really nice with this blue. So I'm going to be using some of that too. Now, when you begin your collection of bits and pieces you've got lots of different ways that you can go. These pieces here are smaller in scale and quite a few of them are old pieces of jewelry making, and some have holes, some don't have holes. Most of them, I glue in place before I stitch, but most of these were bought at auction houses or on eBay. You can buy, you know, a little cluster of these and they're called antique or vintage jewelry findings. So these are wonderful things because of their scale. They're small and you can mix them together in lots of different styles. These happened to be little bits of tin from a ceiling, you know, those old tin ceilings. And these went between circles and they're very cool. One side is really dirty with paint and stuff and the other side is cleaner and they can be hammered flat or you can leave them dimensional. It has one hole, so that's helpful for attaching it. This is an old piece of jewelry. So is this, and those are wonderful to use. These are little bits and pieces that I took off of, I think it was a jewelry holder of some sort that I didn't want but I wanted the bits and pieces and I just broke those off. So these are just wonderful things that you can find that you can reuse. Then we get to the more industrial things. And I tend to like to let things rust. So if I buy something and it's clean and neat and tidy, I just throw it outside, and I have this rust pile that's getting rained on all the time and getting dirty and wet and rusting and getting this wonderful patina on it. I believe this is the front of an old heater, one of those built in heaters instead of a fireplace. This was part of that, and it's got a couple of holes down here that could be used to attach it. It's hollow on the back. It's good and rusty. I believe this might've been part of an old screen door. It looks like a hinge might've gone here but I'm not sure, it's very heavy iron and again a beautiful design and a wonderful patina. And I think it's going to make a great top piece for a quilt that could be used as the hanging apparatus too. These are old calipers. I'm not sure what they were used for but they're rusty and they move and I can take them apart and do all sorts of fun things with them. I think these were some part of jewelry, but they've been patinaed, starting to go turquoise. Part of a lock. Wonderful little door knockers or knobs. Things that were probably on, I think, old files. And I think they're probably brass, very fun. I could insert paper in there that I've written something on if I wanted to. This is the spring from an old clock. These are some rusty square nails. Some wonderful rusty keys. Now, I buy keys at secondhand stores. Sometimes you get a big glob of them. And again, I just throw those out in the rain in my pile. I think this is an old rasp used for sanding. So is this right here. Part of a kid's toy maybe? This is a wooden propeller. And I found this on a walk. I think it might've been somebody's bike chain a long long time ago and have broken it into pieces so I can sew it onto things. Now, you can see that these get rusty and that rust is kind of dirty. And before I use them before I want to put them down on fabric, I prepare them. And that simply means that I take a soft metal bristle brush and I kind of brush off a whole lot of the dirt on the surface. So I'll just kind of come in and, and brush off anything that I think is going to debris off and kind of get on my quilt. I don't want it really clean 'cause I want it to continue to look old, and then I'm going to take any type of wax, you can use Johnson's floor wax for this, but I happen to have a jeweler's wax. And you just coat the surface with that, and that will keep it from moving onto the surface of your quilt. So you take a soft cloth and the wax and it shouldn't take away the patina. It will take away just the tiniest little bit of the surface dirt. In the beginning it will change the look of the piece, but as it dries the look of the piece will go back to what it was. And I just want enough on here so that it stops putting off the dirt and the grime that's on it. So Johnson's floor wax can be bought at Home Depot or at your grocer. And it will do the same thing that this is doing. This just happens to be a wax that I use for jewelry making, so I had it on hand. So now this guy is ready to use and you can see that it changed it a bit. It's not quite as rusty as it was but it still has all that wonderful patina on it. And now, once it's dry, I know that it's not gonna put any marks on my piece. Okay, so now we have all of our wonderful things that we can play with. Your first duty or challenge, I guess, is to go and find some wonderful bits and pieces that you want to use on your assemblage.