Great Ways to Create Fabric Art 4 October 2015  |  Nicola

With the evenings starting to get darker and chillier, October is the perfect time to think about learning new skills or starting those homemade Christmas presents (if you’re anything like us, it’s never too early!). Today, we’ve found our favourite ways of being creative with fabric; from handpainted cushions to 3D embroidery and getting eco-friendly with flower pounding, there’s something for everyone to have a go at.

We stumbled across these watercolour cushions over at Ella Claire Inspired, and immediately fell in love with the gentle, hazy effect – perfect for hanging onto summer that little bit longer! Over at College Fashion they were also painting onto fabric, but this time they used different effects to create a DIY version of the popular ‘galaxy’ print that’s been in high street shops everywhere this year. The tutorial shows instructions for a top, but we were thinking it’d be quite easy to make some ‘out of this world’ (sorry!) cushions for the lounge or bedroom.

We’re always impressed with the amount of embroidery techniques we see online, but the tutorial for 3D embroidery over at Needle ‘n’ Thread is pretty genius  - by just stitching over a piece of cord, you can make your artwork really come to life. So simple, but so effective! We were also quite taken with the doily bowls over on the Free People blog and the doily lampshade made using a similar technique at Dos Family – really delicate and pretty, and perfect for any late summer parties or weddings.

We’re always keen to have a go at printing our own fabric designs, and we found some really simple ideas from some great blogs; the folks at Poppytalk have a great DIY on how to print using contact paper and a sponge, while Crafts with Foamy show you how to make your own stamps with some cheap-as-chips craft foam.

Finally, we discovered an amazing tutorial for flower pounding at Positively Splendid, a technique that we’d never even heard of! Basically, placing fabric over flowers and then literally pounding them with a hammer leaves a pretty wonderful print on the fabric – we’re thinking of making some to frame in an embroidery hoop for some Christmas presents.