as you will have gathered by now my dear patient readers I spend as much time as possible sewing, stitching, machine embroidering, creating, playing with fabrics and generally having a wonderful time...(housework what housework?!).. even better is teaching a machine embroidery Workshop and I thought I'd just share a little of what we covered at a recent one...looking at creating a textured surface...
I had 4 lovely and very creative souls with me, interestingly the Universe had kindly organised they were all students...one doing GCSE, two at A'level and one doing an Open COllege of Arts Textile course...amazing synchronicity!
as usual the immaculate studio prepared for my workshopees quickly bcomes a creative brouhaha...what a great word that is, no idea what it means but it seems to fit!
dear old bondaweb (ahem there are probably lots of other kinds of fusible fabric out there Ed)...that versatile "heat reactive, sheet of glue which permanently bonds one fabric to another when ironed"...aha but did you know it's really fun when you paint it? with watercolour, or acrylic or maybe fabric paint...
and then you can literally glue on texture by ironing on snippets of thread or fabric, then just add stitching...
mmm...pleased with these!
and then there's that weird stuff, Tyvek, described by Barnyarns as a "spun bonded polythene fabric that is non-toxic and accepts colour mediums, will shrink, bubble and distort when heated"...not half we say! Mind you it's not so good at the health and safety owing to fumes, so you must heat it outdoors. I don't personally use it a lot...but it is amazing...
here is some which has been painted
then heated...
stitched with snippets of fabric then zapped...
painted then stitched, you can see the fabric shrinking has distorted the stitching
On the whole though I prefer to use more fabric and stitch based ways and challenge my process and creativity to achieve the textures I want...
but it may still include some bondaweb...here used OVER lots of fabric snippets, ironed on then stitched...
and bondaweb underneath...
and there may still be some heating...I used to do this with a household paint stripper, all my degree work was done with me hanging around outside the door of my studio 'burning' my beautiful work with this device!
you'll be pleased to know I do now have a more specialised controllable heat 'appliance'...
eg for burning away a top fabric to reveal layers underneath...I have to experiment first to see which fabrics will melt away...
or for small pieces of fabric stitched on top and then burned away...so much delicious colour too...
you can see why I need a housekeeper, cleaner, gardener and cook...because doing this is just so much more fun!
Hope you've enjoyed the workshop...and maybe been inspired to have a go...
Emmax
