Art Quilts to Wear!--Quilted Collage Cuffs

Here we are at the end of another month buried in a fresh 12 inch snowfall with an art deadline to meet!! Each month, for the work that I delier to the Emporium at Liberty Town, I try to come up with something just a little bit different. Lately I have been thinking of trying my hand at creating stitched cuff bracelets like the one's that you see here. I ahve seen some wonderful examples of such creations in several of the altered art magazines and felt that this would be a great stash busting exercise for me.
The cuff on the far left is my white and cream confection created on a piece of a linen dish towel with layers of hand crocheted vintage lace, cream tatting and filet lace edgings all topped off with various mother of pearl buttons and fresh water pearls. Snaps on the ends attach the cuff for wearing. Here is a close up.

THese cuffs are meant to have a Shabby Chic sort of elegance to them, at least in my interpretation, so you will see frayed edges and some unfinshed seams.

The middle cuff was created using red silks from salvaged men's ties and some lucious red silk brocade rescued form a vintage dress as well as pink silk form a thrift store scarf. I stitched down medallions of my fabric /paper and added seed bead and small crystal embellishments. I also added some purple sari silk ribbon and dyed cheese cloth for some different textures.

Lastly, as far as this batch of cuff's goes, I used some of my sun printed cottons to create the last cuff.

I had sun dyed this cloth using a vintaqge plastic doily as a mask and the ornages and pinks that resulted proved a ery colorfull background with lots of textural interest. To this I added some dyed lace and some hand crocheted edging from an old pillow case and some beautiful pink arigated tatting form an old hankie.

I lined this cuff with more of the sun dyed cloth.


I alos created some new earrings using vintage red buttons . Previously, I hae made this design using mother of pearl buttons, but these are specail for Valentine gifting.

We will see how folks visiting the Emporium at Liberty Town react to the Art Quilts to Wear!! I am planning on crafting several more to post on my Etsy site.