SchoolArts - October 2007

• Draw your design on a piece of drawing paper.

• Choose a square of fabric for the front of the arpillera.

• Choose which other fabrics you would like to use for your designs and attach heat bond to the fabric (follow instructions on packaging).

• The heat bond has a backing similar to tracing paper. Draw your shapes on the paper backing and then cut them out.

• Peel off the paper backing from the cutout shapes. Using the iron, iron on your shapes to your fabric square.

• Continue ironing on shapes until your fabric has all the shapes and design elements you want.

• Cut another piece of fabric for your backing as well as cotton batting the same size. You will now have two fabric squares and

Left: Robin Phillips. Right: Mitzi Branham.

one piece of cotton batting. Sandwich the batting in between the two pieces of fabric and secure with straight pins.

• Using simple overhand stitches, attach the outside of your fabrics together using a variety of embroidery floss colors.

• Add embellishments to your design with beads or embroidery stitches to add color and to secure your fabrics together.

Resources

Dorros, Arthur. Tonight Is Carnaval.

New York, NY: Penguin Young Readers Group, 1995.

LaDuke, Betty. Compañeras Women, Art & Social Change in Latin America. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1985.

Mack, Stevie and Kathleen Williams. Arpilleras! The Colorful Appliqués of Peru. Tucson, AZ: Crizmac, 2007.

Jane Dalton is an artist, educator, and author. She offers renewal seminars for teachers. The student projects in this article were created by North Carolina public school teachers attending a workshop entitled Affirming Diversity Through Art. daltonje@aol.com

NATIONAL STANDARD

Students analyze relationships of works of art to one another in terms of history, aesthetics, and culture, justifying conclusions made in the analysis and using such conclusions to inform their own art-making.