Stitch, stitch and then stitch again.

Lots of stitching - I am not sure what this technique is called but I learnt this at NCEATA - Newcastle Creative Embroiderers and Textile Artists, where one of the members, Aileen  demonstrated how she creates such interesting fabric from scraps.

1. Small scraps of patterned and/or plain fabrics are placed side by side on some iron-on  interfacing.
2. Iron everything down to hold in place.
3.Then use a decorative  stitch  on your sewing machine. Use a matching colour of one piece of fabric, stitch over it, going off the edges over the adjoining pieces.
4. Change the thread colour and stitch again, choosing one of the adjoining pieces of fabric.
5. Then stitch again ... repeating the sequence over and over again.

The first project I made was a piece of fabric large enough to cover an A5 size note book.

Then I tried the technique out on smaller pieces for tags

I also tried a variation of the technique. Instead of  using bits of fabric, I coloured some white cotton with pencils and then stitched in the same fashion. I like the effect, but it doesn't have the texture of my previous samples. What do you think?