Showing posts with label free motion doodling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free motion doodling. Show all posts

Friday, June 26, 2015

Still playing with free motion patterns

I have continued with my small pieces of free motion sewing. They are not very big and I am using some patterns similar to my black and white pen doodling.
As you can see, they are not very big, that is the lid of a pen at the top of the photo.
One major difference is that I need to use a continuous motion pattern. And I am including colour, which makes quite a bit of difference.

And I am still learning to sew with my new Husqvarna - I like lots about it but it is different from what I am used to. One of the things that is causing some 'design decisions' is that I am having trouble sourcing bobbins for my particular machine. I only have 9 and about 4 of them have quite a lot of thread on them, in colours I am not currently using.  So I am trying not to waste that thread and am using a very small number of bobbins. Therefore I am blending colours because I don't want to waste what is on the bobbin, I don't want to cover what is there with another colour (it won't be enough and/or will be in the way if I need the inside colour).

So the 'design decisions' are to use what is on the bobbins. It is not totally random but it does change what I might have done. I am actually finding it rather useful, it is making the colour changes less noticeable as I am either changing the bobbin or the top thread but rarely do I change both at the same time. I seem to remember learning about this in several of my recent workshops - now I am applying the idea and finding that is works!
I am also using a smaller range of colours, it is too much trouble to start with a new colour, change the bobbin thread (and probably have to throw it away), so I am staying with a limited colour range. One of the threads is variegated, so that helps.


And (this seems to be my favourite word tonight) I am finding that the sewing looks very different when I have dissolved the soluble fabric, which is not a surprise really, it is just disappointing when things don't quite turn out how you had hoped.

Another thing that has happened is that I was having trouble seeing some of the paler colours and have missed some of the connecting lines that are necessary for the piece to hold together. This is another difference from drawing doodles, all the areas need to definitely connect to each other or your piece falls apart when the support fabric dissolves.


Not to worry, I will pin the broken pieces to the other squares and they will not be obvious.
I still need a few more squares to make the piece work better, and in case I decide to omit one or two of the current pieces. More work to be done soon.

I am basing my idea on a concertina book, using thread rather than paper. I found the pattern on a blog by Liz Plummer, about bookmaking.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Doodle sewing

I am combining my interest in doodle drawing with free motion machine sewing.  I used a drawing I had done of a tree trunk (another that seems to have the pattern of the bark going up the tree from left to right) and traced the main outlines onto soluble fabric.  Then I tried doodling it in a similar way using the sewing machine.


Surprisingly, it is not much slower than the drawing.  One of the main drawbacks is that you can't alway see where the needle is going, as you move backwards and forwards.  But that didn't matter to me in this instance.
I need to practise more and see if I can come up with more patterns that will hold together when the soluble fabric is gone. I couldn't get it quite the same as the pen doodling, not that I was trying all that hard, but I was quite pleased with the look.

Then I dissolved the backing.  It shrank much more than I expected.  I used rayon thread this time and now I will have to do some samples as much the same as I can make them to see what the difference is between cotton and rayon.  I might even lash out and get some polyester and see how that compares.

The shrinkage means that the darker, more heavily sewn areas, are quite dense and my variations in tone are less clear. Oh well, live and learn.
The final piece over the picture I had traced it from.  Quite a lot of shrinkage.