Mixed Mania Apron

A year and a half ago Cheryl Prater and Debbi Crane asked my sister Deb and I to make a mixed media apron for the book they were writing, Mixed Mania. Since Deb lives in Maine and I live in Chicago, I started the apron and then mailed it to her for embellishing and finishing.

I was not sure what I was going to do, I just knew it needed to incorporate paper and fabric, so I pulled out the gel medium some images printed on paper, a sewing pattern, a phone book page and tore them up and glued them to some white fabric with the gel medium. I painted the fabric and paper images with textile paint then grabbed a sharpie marker and drew some branches and flowers. I took out the white pearl Lumiere paint and painted around the flowers and branches and added a few more details with a black pen.

I cut some paper leaves and used gel medium to glue them to the painted fabric. I stitched around the flowers, leaves and branches then sewed the fabric into an apron shape adding blue rick rack trim.
Then I mailed it to my sister.

Deb added birds cut from fabric, paper butterflies and eggs, french knots on the flowers, stitched details on the leaves and white on white swirling stamped designs.
It was a really fun project to do, and it was the inspiration for the technique I have used in many other projects like these.