This innovative how-to book uses classic and modern techniques to create interesting custom fabrics that are used in a dazzling array of fresh, stylish yet practical must-have items for you and your home. Make unique cloth using a variety of easy fiber-art and fabric-manipulation techniques, then use it to create original fabric projects from wearables and gifts to home decor. From laptop cases to evening bags, elegant wraps to flirty skirts, floor pillows to whimsical curtains, "Fabricate" takes simple materials and transforms them through texture, substance, visual interest, witty adornments, and clever embellishments. Make a felted puff-ball rug, create a faux-chenille throw, or try your hand at a textured shibori scarf. The creative possibilities are endless!This work helps you to create unique effects with pleats and crinkles; puckers and tufts; cut-and-fray fabric techniques; laminates that add colorful, versatile, and playful layers; surface embellishment techniques like cording, applique, and crazy stitch; heat-treated techniques like burn-out, burn-away, and fabric etching; and, fabrics designed with solvy and repeating notions like rickrack, hooks and eyes, and zippers. The sky is the limit! From surface-design methods to embellishments to innovative fabric construction, this book will inspire you to rethink your expectations of what fabric can be.In addition to the cloth-making techniques, there are over 17 projects that show what you can make with your unique fabrics. All techniques and projects are shown through detailed step-by-step photography and illustrations. Beginning and expert sewers alike will be thrilled to find that sewing just got creative, beautiful, and artful again. If you are a crafter, sewer, or are simply fabric-obsessed, Fabricate will take your addiction to new levels.

About the Author

Artisan, author, and photographer Susan Wasinger has been a graphic designer for twenty years specializing in book, magazine, and packaging design. Taught couture sewing skills by her Swiss grandmother, Susan sewed her first pair of pants at age four. Since then, she has sewn everything from silk dresses to cotton quilts to down sleeping bags to neoprene guitar cases. Her design work, photographs, projects, and writing have been included in magazines as diverse as Herb Companion, PieceWork, Metropolitan Home, and Natural Home and Garden. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Reviews

If you want the designer look but find your bank manager is not in agreement with you then perhaps this book might be of use. In here are seventeen projects that show how to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary and add that touch of uniqueness to your sewing. This is basically all about taking plain fabrics (or old items) and making them into something innovative and different. If, like this reviewer, you are stuck with a limited assortment of stores selling a tiny range of fabrics then this will have plenty of appeal. Learn how to pleat, gather, applique, fray, tuft and ruffle fabrics to create shag pile rugs, fabric flower bedecked purses, recycled plastic bag tote bags and give the appearance of embroidery without stitching. Many of these projects have a distinct retro appearance that make me think of the 60s and Habitat stores, but even if this is not to your taste this is an empowering sort of book. Projects are described in detail with plenty of photographed stages and patterns, and it is easy to adapt the techniques to suit your own ideas. Certainly I was left thinking that even the dullest fabric does not need to be painted or embroidered over to look interesting, and I particularly loved the ideas for fun and creative recycling. A useful book that will be opened again and again, and which is sure to appeal to anybody with a sewing machine and some experience of both working with patterns and "going it alone".-Myshelf.com Do you ever find a fantastic piece of fabric and then not know what to do with it? Have you ever coloured or created a fabric and wished there was some way to show it off to its best advantage? Susan Wasinger could well have the answer for you with this book which offers seventeen designs where the fabric is undoubtedly the star of the show. Ideas vary from an evening bag to a laptop case, an elegant wrap to a little skirt. In each case, the fabric takes centre stage and has been transformed through texture, substance, adornment and embellishment. As well as full instructions, the book offers templates where needed and the photography shows each piece. Whether you want to create using a new piece of fabric or recycle a favourite vintage piece, there is an idea to suit you here.-Classic Stitches Suddenly, fabric is not just fabric - ruffled, puffed, pleated, nipped and tucked, it takes on a whole new identity. The 17 projects are all very do-able and the looks are stylish and modern. Even the descriptions sound tempting: ruffled flowers (the bag shown on the cover); crinkled pleats (folded and twisted iridescent silk); puffed tufts (gorgeous flirty skirt). Other techniques include trapping fibres between layers (for 'stitchless embroidery'!), laminating felt, fusing plastic and cutting and fraying. If you want to give your textiles a contemporary twist, you'll find the ideas excitingly inspirational - all you need is your imagination.-Stitch This book was born out of frustration that the author encountered when wanting to use fabric to create, but never being able to find the right one. Susan Wasinger aims to take the fabric and make it into something amazing that you want to use in your designs, rather than waiting around for the perfect fabric to come along. This is not a book about surface design or embellishing fabric (although this comes into it in a simple form). Rather it is about manipulating fabric with simple techniques that you can then use to give a 'wow' factor to your creations. It is divided into four sections: Pleats, Crinkles & Tufts; Laminates & Matrix; Cut and Fray; and Surface Embellishment. Each looks at a way of changing your fabric and then making it into something - you can crumple and pleat a piece of silk, and then there's a pattern for making a table runner with it, or creating shaggy felt pleats which makes a cushion. A good variety of fabrics are used - felt, plastic bags, sheers, silk and a lot of different ideas are tried out. I particularly liked a lampshade made out of small pieces of calico, all haphazardly thrown together with water-soluble fabric, and could see that technique being adapted to make a layered wallhanging. The projects all relate more to home furnishings and accessories (there are several bags to make, curtains, clothes, etc). This book is not about creating art as such, but taking your fabric and making pieces that are a little out of the ordinary. And maybe taking some of the techniques and using them in your art.-Workshop on the Web An interesting book which explains seventeen novel techniques using fabrics, including some made with silk. The first chapter, called Crinkles, Pleats & Tufts, shows how to make ruffled flowers on a clutch bag, a crinkle pleated silk scarf and table runner, and a puffed tufted skirt and curtains, among many techniques included. The other chapters explain Laminates and Matrix (include the use of fused plastic, laminated felt and stitchless embroidery), Cut & Fray (includes the techniques for making a silk faux chenille wrap amongst other ideas), and Surface Embellishment (includes machine applique, applied felt, and crosshatch patchwork. It is well illustrated and includes patterns for a number of different bags, a skirt and a tank top. All the techniques are well explained with the use of pictures.-Guild of Silk Painters