teeny tiny collages

so my studio is sparkly clean... so pretty to look at, that I had a bit of a hard time making a mess there again. And if you are like me, you cannot make art without making a mess. I have a few largish projects waiting in the wings, but I just could not get going on them. Luckily I remembered an old trick - start on something small to ease your way back in. I have something coming up (which I will share more on later) that I need small work for, so I decided to make a couple of small collages by recycling scraps from my larger work. I have three baskets of teeny tiny scraps of embroidered, embellished, painted and hand stitched scraps. So before I knew it the couple of collages turned into seven collages. I had a good excuse - seven pretty little frames. I always check the sale bins in various stores and pick up frames that may some day come in handy, as these did this weekend.
So here's how I did them. I worked on all of them together and I started by rooting through my baskets and pulling out the scraps that tickled my fancy. Brightly colored and fanciest scraps where needed for this, since the size is so small I wanted the color to make the first impact. I chose the base scraps and trimmed to approximate size if it was needed. Then I started layering the littlest bits and pieces and forming one of my favorite images - the traditional Russian window. Here are a few in these first stages, the brown cardboard and paper squares you see are from the frames, I kept them close to give myself a visual size reference. Here's one of the windows from start to almost finish. I laid out the basic shape with a few of the bigger scraps. Then I added details with smaller scraps and a bit of yarn. Here's whole little quilt sandwich ready for stitching. There is a muslin back, fused to a timtex batting, which is fused to the background fabric and the scraps are held in place with a little bit of glue. This a look at all the collages with their background fabrics fused and ready for the windows themselves. Here are six of the the seven (the seventh is at the top of the post) all done and ready for their frames. Here they are in their frames, what do you think? I think they are cute!