Paper ‘Quilting-Style’ Collage

At the beginning of the year, I wrote a blog post where I showed some collage art I had been working on. At that time, I had been using a mixture geometric shapes and more organic shapes to create my pictures. You can take a look at them here. I really liked how they turned out, but it bothered me a little how I had overlapped the paper in some of the pictures, instead of getting them to lie flush together. I also wanted to try playing with making patterns with paper, instead of abstract compositions.

Then, a couple of weeks after writing that post, I went to the Spring Quilt Show at Ardingly Showground, where I saw a lot of beautiful work. I was specifically draw to some of Gillian Travis’ work, namely her inlay and interchange applique work, and wondered if I could use that kind of idea, but with paper. So, the idea was born.

It ended up being a bit trickier than I first anticipated and, as such, I haven’t expanded on the idea as much as I could have, but it was definitely a new idea for me to play around with and produced some interesting results.

Patchwork-style collage with small triangles in a pattern

Patchwork-style collage with small triangles randomised

Patchwork-style collage with large and small triangles in a pattern

Patchwork-style collage with large small triangles randomised

Circles cut out of squares and interchanged and inlayed

Ovals cut out of stripes and interchanged and inlayed

Ovals cut out of stripes and interchanged and inlayed

For the patchwork-style piece, I found it difficult to get the triangles to always line up properly. I imagine that when I was cutting them out, I wasn’t able to cut them exactly the same size, and so even if I was just a millimetre out, it has made all the difference, which is a shame. I think the last couple worked really well. I love the effect of the ovals mixed with the lines, especially where I have used the striped ovals I’ve cut out, elsewhere in the piece and I plan to do a few more in different colours and sizes.