A Plethora of New Patches

As you may know, I have been swapping patches for a while now… I’ve been experimenting with all sorts of techniques, which has made it a lot of fun!

The main image for this patch is a scanned picture from a wonderful Alice in Wonderland coloring book available from Dover Publications. (For years, Dover has been one of my go-to sources for Christmas gifts, birthday party favors, exotic-themed coloring books, and more.) I’d colored the pig a vivid shade of pink / fuscia, and used that in the background fabric. The words from the “Pig and Pepper” chapter of the book are all written with a laundry marker. The little fabric tag was spritzed with spray-on dyes and then printed using ink specially designed for fabrics. The little bow is made from silk ribbon that was intended to be necklace cording. Many of the techniques on this Alice in Wonderland patch were ones I had already used on my last Alice in Wonderland patch.

This patch is much simpler. It was made with pre-printed fabric from Spoonflower. Are you familiar with Spoonflower? You can custom design your very own fabric design… or choose from hundreds of amazing, awesome-cool designs uploaded by others. You want fabric with pictures of anatomically-correct brains? There are several versions to choose from at Spoonflower! The fabric is pricey, but great quality.

One of my swap partners likes Tim Burton, and asked for Tim-Burton inspired patches. This one has a couple of lines of a Tim Burton poem (“The Girl with Many Eyes”) on it. The little glass beads look like eyes. And the striped tentacle was made from an old scarf of mine.

This sea turtle was drawn with a gel bleach pen on a batik fabric. Most fabrics these days seem almost impervious to bleach. The exceptions I found in my fabric stash were almost all batiks and similar hand-dyed-look fabrics. If I have time, I’ll do a tutorial on bleached fabric art. There are several versions of the turtle above in my trash can, and I wish I’d had a tutorial to teach me a few of the secrets of bleach-art beforehand. (For example, single drops of bleach-gel counter intuitively create small circles (look at the front flippers) rather than the solid white round shapes you’d expect.

This patch is not as experimental. Just small buttons and traditional embroidery. It is supposed to depict “sunflowers and daisies”.

One of my swap partners said she was a Michael Jackson fan, so here is his famous single glove, covered in seed beads and backed with black velvet.

This next one is a fun font fabric. (I love this fabric!) One of my new favorite quilting techniques for these patches, is adding the little asterisk shapes. I used that same technique on this moon patch: