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Mounting fiber art


For many many years, I have collected pieces of fiber art whenever I travel.  Most of the pieces from my early days were finished, and some were even mounted.  But I have a few from Central America which do not have finished edges, and I thought about it for quite some time before deciding how to mount them.

I decided not to put them under glass, so most of the raw edges were going to be turned under or pulled to the back of the mount somehow.  The one exception was the bird embroidery piece from Guatemala, where I decided to leave the bottom free to show the raw edge of the dishtowel background fabric.


Another heavily embroidered piece is also from Guatemala, and shows off lots of Mayan cultural symbols.  It's also done on a dishtowel type of material, with no lining, so the fabric ends up with a fair amount of buckling.


The third piece is from Panama, and was a gift from a friend who visits there every year.  You can probably see pretty clearly that it's a mola style stitched piece.

Warning: I used very strong tape on the edges of my pieces.  If you are concerned about keeping everything completely archival, stitch them into place instead of using tape or use an archival linen tape.

1. Select the piece to mount (see image above) and cut a piece of foam core to size.  It needs to be small enough to wrap the edge fabric to the back, even if only a little bit.


2. Use double stick tape along the edges to keep the fabric from slipping while you wrap it to the back.



3. Pin opposite long edges to the back and then pin the remaining two short ones. Miter the corners if you like.



4. Replace the pins with tape (I used Gorilla Tape), just catching the edge and smoothing it to the back of the foam core.

Copyright 2013 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

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Comments

Sarah Sequins said…
Cyndi, thanks so much for this tutorial! I have some funky fiber art I made in college that's just sitting in a box -- maybe I'll finally do something with it.
Cyndi L said…
That would be great! I got tired of seeing all my pretty pieces just sitting in a pile :-)
Those are some fab looking pieces! Thanks for the tute on how to do them. I have some pieces around here also....
Cherie Burbach said…
What a great idea. I always try and display everything, too. So much better than letting it sit in a box!
Isn't it incredible what indigenous peoples create with the barest of materials? You have some wonderful pieces there.