Product and Process: What it Takes to Create

I have my first outdoor art fair this Saturday, so I though that this would be a good time to discuss my fabric boxes a bit more.  I tend to work on the boxes in an assembly-line fashion, so I have had very little notion of the time it takes to make one box, start to finish.  A couple of weeks ago, I set aside a day to find out this mystery of time.

Earlier in the spring, I managed to find myself the new owner of these worn out vintage garments:

This pile of rags became the starting point for my time trial box.  I cut and pieced a 6" crazy quilt square from the clothes, using Creative Grids templates.  Next, I fused a lightweight stabilizer to the back, and embellished the crazy quilt square.  This square became the top of the box lid.

Next, I cut the garments into chunks of sew-able fabric, and pieced them using Pat Pauly's improvisational piecing method. 

Once I had a large enough section from all of the bits, I could then cut the sides of the box.  I use Timtex or Fast to Fuse as the foundation for my box pieces, and I fuse fabric to both sides. 

Once all the box pieces were measured many times and (hopefully) cut once, it was time to start zigzag stitching them together.  Then, I zigzagged around all the edges.  Finally, the last step was pulling up the sides and joining them by hand, whip stitching with sturdy perle cotton thread.

All images copyright RPS, please do not post elsewhere

 



From start to finish, this box took five and a half hours to make.