Through all the circle of the golden year - a collage

A few weeks ago Minerva Craft's Facebook page had a challenge for bloggers like myself. They had a picture of a cutting compass and asked what we could do with, using fabrics etc from their website.

The cutting compass.

For a while now, I've had a collage idea in my head based on circles, producing a series of fabric and paper collages. This request gave me an ideal opportunity to start. I posted my idea and was fortunate enough to be selected. As well as the compass they sent me their orange fat quarter (FQ) bundle and some spotty bias binding (the colour choice was mine).

Their orange FQ bundle, you receive a mixture of 4 from this selection

Bias binding

I had a little trouble using the compass at first. I couldn't get it to cut and the fabric buckled. Needless to say my temper was not pleasant, even after I had looked at videos that I had found on Youtube, which did tell me not to worry about the fabric buckling! To keep my sanity I put it to one side and concentrated on another project.

A couple of weeks later, with the deadline for the post looming I had another go. I'm not sure what happened between the first time and this, but I managed to cut out a selection of circles, or near circles. 

 There is a more expensive version of the compass that has a ratchet that helps you move the compass around in one smooth movement, rather than having to adjust your hand to complete the circle (I found out about this on Youtube).

I used a piece of orange fabric out of my stash for the main body of the collage (backed with wadding) and used a mixture of the Minerva Crafts FQs and my stash for the circles, along with a mixture of orangey bits and pieces.

I started with a blank canvas, rather than planning it out, adding circles where I think they should go. The picture below is my first 'layer' amid sewing.

 

I used a mixture of stitches to add the circles, running, chain and blanket stitches. Basically I kept adding circles, either fabric or embroidered, and buttons, suffolk puffs, crocheted flowers, beads, rose flowers etc until I thought it looked done enough to back. I also added a quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem The Golden Year.

I used the same orange fabric as the front for the back and also added another piece of fabric between the backing fabric and the wadding to make the collage bit more 'body'.

 

After pinning the layers together I added the back half of the bias binding onto the fabric sandwich using my sewing machine. I hand sewed the front half of the bias binding on (rather than sewing the binding on in one go, my hand sewing is much better than my machine sewing!). 

Once the backing and binding were complete I added a couple more things onto the collage to make it (in my eyes anyway) 'complete'.

So here it is, in all it's glory.

 I hope you like it, it's now available in the Elsie May and Bertha shop.

Thanks go to Minerva Crafts for sending me the cutting compass, fabric and bias binding. 

As usual, I'm taking part in Handmade Monday, pop over and see what other makers has been up to.

TTFN

Louise