January 2109

Interesting date again: 19/1/19. It only comes once a year, so I feel the need to post. Fortunately, I have been working on something, so I have something to show.

I am working on a companion piece for the acorn work. This time, it is the grown tree. I took several photos at Warringal and have played with the filters in Photoshop to make the image a bit less real and give me some sort of abstract thing to work from. It is not very abstract but is enough to give me light and dark areas.

The trunk wasn't very noticeable. One of the elements of the current challenge, for the 3rd piece in a challenge of 4 pieces, was to have some 3D (or 2 1/2 D, whatever that is) in it. So I have made some little twisted pieces of fabric and then applied them to give some texture. Here's hoping that it will be enough. Not that we are very strict with our challenges and elements, it is just to make us think.

Time to stop now, let it sit overnight and have another look at it tomorrow. Still lots to do on the leaves.

Making some thread flowers

A friend is organising a 'small art' exhibition with the theme Full Bloom. So I have been working on some images.

The latest idea is to make some thread sewn flowers, as we did at the Meredith Woolnough workshop earlier in the year.

I spent several hours making three flowers.

I sewed them in circular shapes, using free motion embroidery.

Pink is sooo not my colour! But the apricot and nectarine blossoms are coming out in the backyard and I was influenced by them. And I had a whole lot of pink thread, left over from a previous lot of work on gum blossoms.

I have been using wooden frames for my machine embroidery but discovered that the plastic and metal hoop works well too. I wanted to use it because it is smaller and the flowers were only little. And they fit under the foot much more easily.

I dissolved the soluble fabric and laid the flowers out in some aluminium foil to dry. I used the foil to give them an extra support in the shaping of the pieces.

Now all I have to do is think about how I might use them, how I might mount them.

It was another day when I was not feeling great and didn't know what to do - so I sewed. This was not necessarily a great idea, I now have a stiff neck and sore back. But I also have three flowers. So not all bad.

I will work on how to present them, how to include them in a 'small art' way.

Abstract portrait

After deciding that I wasn't that keen about my portrait, I looked around the internet and found this image at 123RF.

I then got out some cut off threads from my tapestry weaving and my machine sewing, and some small scraps from my quilting.  All recycled elements, very happy about that!

I laid them out on the surface of the fabric, which had Vliesofix ironed onto it.

Then I just sewed over them.  

I am not sure how well it would wear but it was fun to do.  

It is not a self-portrait, I don't have blue eyes.

Making the peel-based cocoon

As the paper template didn't seem to be working that well, I thought I would try it using a different medium. I traced the lemon peel to make a template and decided to use free motion sewing, on dissolvable fabric.
 It turned out rather small.

I decided to enlarge it, using  the photo I had taken of the peel.  I took out the colour and highlighted the edges in Photoshop.  I used the actual photo so the proportions would stay the same.  I divided the image into four pieces and made them A4 sized.  I printed them out, stuck them together and traced it onto the dissolvable fabric.

You can see the smaller cocoon on the right of the template.

I used some small pieces of fabric to give depth and some stability to the free motion sewing.

Now I have a larger cocoon.  It still doesn't fit together as well as I envisaged but it doesn't matter as I am aiming to produce distressed, abandoned cocoons.

I am not that happy with it as the colours change too markedly for my taste.  However, it is a good sample and I am learning as I go.

trying for 3D shapes

At the moment I am working on machine sewing, free motion.  I am trying to make some 3D shapes and have used a template that, when sewn together, draws the fabric up into a shaped piece.

 Here is the first stage, a flat piece of sewing. I have included some small pieces of fabric with the sewing. I drew the template onto the soluble fabric and sewed over the fabric and made some free motion lacey fabric. When I soak the soluble fabric off, the template distorts a little, so the shaping in a bit random but still works for what I want.

Here is one of the pieces with the uneven edges sewn together, drawing it up into a more moulded shaped.

I made two pieces, joined them together and here is the resulting 3D shape, hanging in the garden.

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.

Sampling

I spend most Wednesdays with a friend and we work on projects side by side.  I had a play with the sewing machine, to see what the different stitches looked like.  It turned out to be more trouble than I had expected.  I remembered to take all the cogs that have the different stitches on them.  Good start.

I diligently worked on cog A and tried the various stitches.  I had some trouble with the tension.  So my friend suggested that I vary the fabric I was using - I was using cotton with a light iron-on interfacing. Then I tried the cotton doubled over.  Still some ridging with the zig-zag type stitches but a little better.
Then she suggested I try changing the pressure.  She is much more experienced with sewing machines than I am, that would never have occurred to me. (I only recently discovered that it has its own foot and pressure knob for free motion sewing. I have been using generic free motion feet and dropping the feed dogs myself, not through the specific application that the machine has. It works both ways, a very versatile machine.  Husqvarna 2000SL)
Things improved but the stitches were still rather uneven.  I think this was due to how I was handling the fabric, I am very used to free motion sewing where I move the fabric and don't rely on the feed dogs.  So I tried not handling the fabric much at all and it seemed to improve.

However ... I didn't take the manual for the machine and when it came time to change the cog I couldn't remember how to do it.  Extremely frustrating!  I was a bit worried that the plastic might be getting brittle and that I might break it if I was forceful. 

Fortunately my friend was calm and collected and together we managed to work out how to do it.  So I have tried cogs A, B and C.  There are still some tension problems, causing ridges.  These might be ok with some of the work I do as I like texture but I want the option of not having texture.  When she tried her machine, a much newer Janome, there was no tension problem and it all sat beautifully flat.  This was a good indication that all was not well with my machine.

So I will have to keep trying.  

Even if I do get all the tension issues sorted out, then I want to experiment with different threads, maybe using the bobbin for thicker threads.

I also have to take into account how I am going to get the design onto the fabric, will I trace it onto the interfacing and then have the design reversed, so that the bottom of the sewing is what shows?  I will have to constantly check the underneath of what I am doing.  So the tension (well-chosen word!) needs to be right.

Anyway, I am getting some idea of what I might be able to do with the machine, trying to use my recent drawings as the inspiration. 

Experimenting with Free Motion Sewing Machine Lace

I have been playing around with free motion sewing machine lace.  I tried some different weight threads and even used a fabric base for part of it.  That turned out to be interesting, the sewing and washing out of the soluble stabiliser caused some shrinkage and the silk puckered. I quite liked this result.

I also used some left-over hat making stuff that I bought last year (I just cannot think of its name).  It was good for a base for the sewing and gives some added texture, something that I love.

I also used some knitting wool and couched it.

I did this as a test for some thread I thought I would like to use but it turned out to be a bit too thick, even though it seems to have been ok in the sample.  I didn't write down the things I was doing immediately and, by the time I had washed it out and dried it, I couldn't remember exactly what I had done.  Very frustrating.  Of course, I can look carefully and see and it is close enough to me doing it that I can remember the sorts of things I did.  Still, it is a lesson on writing down what you are doing as you are doing it.

Trying a new technique

I have played around for the last couple of days with a technique that I saw on a video and also in the last Quilting Arts magazine (Dec/Jan).  It is by Beryl Taylor and incorporates reverse applique.  It looks so simple on the video and sounds so easy in the article.
I have spent three days working on it.  I decided to adapt her work and use my own design, based on tiles I saw in Turkey.  The simplest was of stars as they gave me plenty of pieces to cut out to get the colours showing.  However, I had decided to try to use a blue palette based on the blue and white tiles we saw.  Consequently, the design is not clear - it doesn't 'pop'.

This was despite having 45 different fabrics in the piece - 9 piles with 5 fabrics in each.  I had done the classic quilter thing, finding fabrics that go together beautifully. I needed to use some that I would never put together, to get the contrast.
However, having seen the video, I will put this aside and think about some of the other things Beryl uses on her art quilts, things I would never have thought of doing.  It will be a good experimental piece, if nothing else.

Back to the drawing board.  I then thought about other designs we had seen in Turkey and realised that we had seen somes that had circles as part of them, the same shape that Beryl had used.  So more cutting out and putting together of colours - ones that would have a greater contrast this time.

After I had sewn and then cut them again, I attached the squares to the backing and started playing with the sewing machine.  It is a long time since I have done any free motion sewing so the circles are quite wonky - fortunately that is not only allowable in this design, it is necessary, otherwise you don't get the small sections for cutting into.

I even found some metallic thread in my stash.  I could have sworn I have never sewn with metallic thread but there was a bobbin with some on it.  After many re-threadings, I know why I haven't done a lot of metallic thread sewing.

Well, that's annoying

Yesterday, after our visit to Heide, my friend and I came home and I showed her how to do free motion sewing. It was a fun afternoon and I had got out some of my samples to show her different uses and techniques. I haven't done a lot of it but I do have a few bits and pieces.






I found some half finished work that I realised I would like to finish. All of the above samples were done in classes and so I had tried to design my own piece but life interfered and I hadn't finished it.

So today I got out the machine, ready to have a play but first I was going to whip up some napkins for another friend, using New York themed fabric that we bought at The City Quilter in New York. So I had to change the foot. That was when I discovered that the shank has fallen too low and I couldn't put the new foot on - how annoying!




Of course the repair shop is not open on a Sunday, so I will take it in tomorrow. Fortunately I had another small sewing machine, useful for taking to classes. It doesn't do free motion but I have been able to play around with the napkins, so it hasn't been a totally unproductive day. It is getting hot now and so staying indoors is the preference. I'll have to try to whip up the enthusiasm for the free motion work another time.