Did you have a sandbox to play in when you were a kid? I remember a big tractor tire from the farm, painted green, and filled with lovely sand, made just for building castles or tunnels and what-have-you. Well, today’s technique, attaching ephemera, was like that – made just for play!
The book suggests making a nine-patch sampler, so I did!
Since I am one of those people who can’t seem to throw away bits and scraps, this sampler was a perfect idea for using some of it up. Now that you’ve seen the whole piece, I’ll show you close-ups of each “patch”.
First is part of a tea packet, topped with the foil wrappers from two types of candy. I freehand stitched a flower shape on the blue one, and beaded the pink one.
The background on this square is cut from a Kleenex tissue box. They have such lovely designs, don’t you think? The top layer is a piece of fusible web that I had painted and stamped some time ago. I punched the letters out and captured them underneath when I ironed the webbing in place.
This is a piece of craft weight interfacing (Pelmet or Vilene) that had also been painted and stamped – probably at the same time as the webbing. The flower was on an old Mother’s Day greeting card.
A square torn from an old newspaper. Not quite yellowed, but not looking new either. The “O” is from an opera souvenir book and it’s held on with a little square brad.
The background piece was a hand written note I received several years ago. It was already torn in half but I don’t remember why! The heart is a paper towel that had been used to sop up paint at some point. The flower is from Christmas decorations that fell apart held on with beads. I told you I never throw anything away, didn’t I?
There’s another one of those tea packets. This time I cut an insert from a Russell Stover’s box and stitched it on top. The newspaper is a fragment from the same page as above, with two more of the square brads.
Almost done. This is from the same opera souvenir book as the “O” earlier, and there is the flap from that pink tea packet. I had a tiny scrap of some hand-painted cotton and I fringed the edges and used some free-motion stitching to attach it and the tea flap.
And lastly, this is an Ocean Current label that Sarge brought home one day to see if I wanted it. I said yes, even though I had no idea what to do with it! It had one grommet in the corner and I added the other one and tied it in place with red ribbon. The blue patch was already stitched on with red zigzag.
Looking at my collection of “junque” (ephemera is the polite word, I guess) I’m guessing I could make one of these pages every day for – oh – the next twenty years?!!
