What is an "Inchie" you ask:
Think of a fabric and fibre Postcard;
an ATC--Artist Trading Card----------and as night follows day,we get the Inchie and the Plus Sized Inchie!
Most people by now know of the Postcard with it's 6by 4 inch format;
The ATC
has a 2.5 by 3.5 inch size
and the Inchie, my friend ,is the miniature version of both the postcard and the ATC:
A one inch fabric and fibre art square.
And then Normajean Brevik over at Fiber Art Traders (aka "FAT" to its members)
took pity on those of us with fat fingers and introduced us to PSI..Plus Sized Inchies---
which are 1.5 inch squares.
Trust me,you'd be surprised at how much easier these art sqaures become with that extra half an inch in their dimensions!
The lavender,red,turquoise and purple squares on the left are all one inch squares,and the first I attempted.
The midnight blue and silver ones are 1.5 inch squares or PSI.
The four sets of Inchies were the first I made and were swapped on Carol Taylor's "Textile_ Challenges" group ....and I learned the hard way.!!
I was required to make nine one inch squares for each colour way.
Okay,easy.....a three inch square divided.
My first mistake was fusing the fabric to a stabiliser (in this case,Timtex)
Because I prefer hand work,this made things difficult when I started embellishing;
so I'd advise using a lightweight stabiliser (iron-on Pellon)
You'll also note that apart from most of the Lavender squares,and some of the Turquoise ones I did not "finish" the edges!
(Finished edges were not a requirement,but it does give a better effect)
Before I say anything further,let me tell you where I first heard of the Inchies......and it was Carol who told me:
An Australian woman,Dotee featured One inch fabric collages on her blog"Dotslifeandart"
http://dotslifeandart.blogspot.com/ in mid January this year when she blogged her Fabric Collage Tutorial;
Sara Letchner on http://artsquaresswap.blogspot.com/
also featured them i during May,where you can see how some members used their Inchies to create something else.
Carol on Textile_Challenges ran a Swap, and kindly helped with background information I'd forgotten about (Thanks Carol)
Normajean on FATS went to the slightly larger format.........
So really,how you fabricate your inchie is limited only by your imagination;
Think of them as miniature quilts.......having three layers like most quilts.
But do remember...if you you embellish heavily all over the square it will be difficult to do a machine edge finish after you have added the fabric backing.
My next sets I want to incorporate an eyelet in each one so that they can be more easily used as Charms.
