Playing with Paper Towels

It all started in a class with Elizabeth Busch at Quilting By the Lake. We were painting on fabric and paper. We were cleaning up with paper towels. I kept looking at them in my trash
basket and thinking, hmmm.

Elizabeth told us about doing quick sketches with fabric on index cards. They were fast and fun, little bursts of creativity, potential ideas for larger pieces. But what do you do with all those little "gems"? In an ah-ha! moment, I started sewing the "gems" made with fabric scraps to greeting card stock. When I started saving the paper towels that I cleaned up the paint and dye with, I started using the paper towels for backgrounds on the greeting cards.

Now I buy white paper towels for the "quilt" design in the towel. No towels with tea pots on them for me! Sometimes I skip painting the fabric and monoprint the paper towels. They soak up the paints beautifully, dry really fast, and iron well. A few tears here and there give them character. They can be backed with fusible interfacing to give them more body if needed or fused to other surfaces with fusible webbing. The paper towels are a little more fragile, but anything you can do with fabric, you can do with paper towels, too.

This paper towel thing is just too much fun. There are more things to create with paper towels...jewelry, books, collages, quilts... See you later! I have to go play now.