Making the parasol

I have beavered away at my parasol. There has been a lot of unpicking but I have finally finished it.  It is my first attempt at a parasol and has taught me lots - if I ever decide to try again. I might decide that this is only a sample and make another one, I am keeping my options open.  But it would need to be a much quicker process if I do another.

I pulled apart a child's umbrella and have used the frame for my design.
I used polyester organza which is amazingly slippery!! I made my design using reverse appliqué.  I drew it on soluble fabric and pinned it to the four layers of fabric, which I pinned to the ironing board to keep the layers from moving too much as I cut through them.

I sewed the design and then cut back the layers once the soluble fabric had dissolved and it was dry.  

There are eight pieces which I sewed together only to find that they weren't all exactly the same shape. Close but not exact. Hmm, what to do about that? Oh well, sew them all up and see how it goes at the end. 

It has turned out ok but caused a bit of a problem where the pieces meet at the top as I had four layers and it was a bit bulky.  And, as I said, they are not all exactly the same shape. I was pleased to discover that it was really easy to sew the knobs on.

I sewed on them at the ends of the seams but found that the struts did not stay in place because the slippery fabric caused it all to slip down from the central hole, causing the tension to lessen.  I made a small circle, three layers for stability, and sewed it to the top, to stop the slippage.  The tautness of the fabric then held the knobs in place.

The circle worked ok but you could see the stitches, and the messy joins.

So I made another piece to sit over the top.  I decided to put in some shisha mirrors, inspired by my research for the assignment.  There are some interesting sites (here and here) telling you how to do this.  My sewing is not as perfect as on these examples but I don't mind, it suits the feel of my parasol. Also, I didn't sew the four layers of fabric together, I left them loose and slightly raggedy looking.
Then I slipped the top knob on and it is finished.

However, there was yet another problem because of the difference in the shapes - the struts did not all fit exactly along the seam lines.  As it was necessary to stitch the fabric around the strut (the original umbrella had this) I used this stitch to ease the fabric as close as possible to the strut.  It all works ok, I just hope it holds up to actual use.

Some doubters have meanly said it won't provide any protection from the sun!  I'm hoping that the double, triple and quadruple layers will.  It is just the single layer of yellow that may not be that effective.  So there should be some protection there.  Maybe I'll just try not to go out in the sun at all. And, anyway, it is a work of art, not an actual artefact.

Getting Sidetracked

I was going along quite nicely, working on my blackwork, trying out various stitches, etc.

I am playing around with the very geometric designs in an organic shape.

Then I realised that I had said I would go in a postcard swap in my online group and some of the people had started saying thank you for their card!  I hadn't even started thinking about mine as it is not due to be finished till July 31st.
So I had a bit of a panic and decided I had better start.  I didn't even have a technique in mind, never mind an idea for the theme - Where We Live.
Then I thought about the stained glass window reverse appliqué piece I had made for the Buda exhibition and decided that I would try that technique again. (I got it back today - now to think about what to do with it.)

I have quite a few photos - those that were retrieved when I wiped out my iPhoto library - of some of the stained glass windows in houses in Ivanhoe.  So I tweaked a few of them in Photoshop and printed them out, traced them onto iron-on interfacing and made some 5" x 7" cards.  Who knows why we are using inches instead of centimetres?  We are an Australian/New Zealand group, we should really be using centimetres.

So far I have made two.  It is different with the interfacing, it is stiffer, obviously, but also not see-through.  But I quite like them.  I hope the recipients do too. I haven't sent them yet, I have to make the other two.

Buda Historic Home and Garden Textile exhibition

The Textiles Awards exhibition will be held at the Buda Historic Home from June 2nd to 17th.  It is in Castlemaine, not far from Melbourne.
There are two categories, Inspired by Buda and Gold.  I decided to make a piece that is Inspired by Buda. I have written about it already, in terms of the problem of using inspiration to come up with a new work. There is a lot in the house and gardens that was inspiring.  I eventually decided to work with a bullrush design, incorporating some borders from the stained glass windows in the house.

It is about 50cm x 58cm, made of synthetic organzas and one layer of hand painted silk.  I ended up using about 7 layers as I needed to double some of them to get the intensity I wanted.  Actually, having the silk, which is translucent but not transparent, helped.

I tried to sew very closely along the lines of the design but discovered that, when I cut back the layers, the fabric was starting to pull out from under the sewing lines.  There were two things I had to alter in my technique - one was to sew messy lines so that there was more fabric under the sewing and the other was to cut away from the sewing lines, not very close.  This helped and there was much less pulling away.

I was a bit nervous about washing off the soluble fabric that I had traced my design onto and used to stabilise the work but it all behaved very well when washed - whew!

The organza behaved quite differently from cotton when I cut back too.  It was MUCH easier to go through too many layers, so I had to be very careful to only go back to the colours I wanted to expose.  Crystal organza cuts (and shreds) more easily than ordinary synthetic organza too.

I had two pairs of scissors for this, one very sharp for getting started and one with turned up ends so that I could hold it flat to the fabric with less risk of cutting through too much.

As I was basing it on a stained glass window, I had hoped to have layers the same front and back, cutting though to the middle (i.e., the same back and front) but that was too hard.  So it is to be viewed from one side only.  It also looks different depending on whether you hang it in front of a window or not.  It is transparent and some of the colour is lost when the light shines through.  But I am happy with either look.