Thick Or Thin?

Paper that is!! 🙂

I promised Laura Kate who is a fiber artist, that I would post about sewing on paper today.  I hope you check out Laura Kate’s AWESOME blog!

I like experimenting with many different art materials as many of you may know!

In January of this year, I shared about sewing on Canson mixed media paper in my art journal.  If you want to revisit that post, you can find it here: In Stitches…

Last year, February 20th, I shared about sewing on Swedish Tracing Paper, you can find more about that here:   Swedish Tracing Paper

I recently created some new experiments using Swedish Tracing paper.  It is difficult to SEE that the sewn image below is a eye… I love looking at the back of a piece too!

Sew, (pardon my pun) what papers are best for sewing?  Thick or thin?

Well, I have discovered that depends if you are hand sewing or using a machine?

If hand sewing, such as this eye-opener on 140 lb hot press watercolor paper, it helped to use an awl to pre-punch my holes.  (A needle would also work if you don’t have an awl).

If machine sewing, be sure to use a sharp needle (paper will dull it rather quickly) and sew at a slow pace.  I used rice paper here:

If the paper is slippery like deli paper, it is better to double it so the stitches won’t rip out.

I often use my sewn paper experiments on my Gelli plate.  I like how the stitches create their own subtle patterns.

I think the best way to learn is EXPERIMENT!!  And record your findings in a journal.

How do you remember YOUR art experiments?  I hope you share them with me.

Cheers! 🙂