Chapter 8

 

Soft Edge

Torn paper
using five shades from newsprint

 
Torn fabric
sheers, satin(both sides) fine calico and hand embroidery fabric.  The final rows weree machined with a row of straight stitch to secure them.

 Torn fabric nest
I thought I'd make an exotic bird's nest using sari silk as it's torn and fraying already!

 
Torn fabric background
sheer fabrics which usually fray as soon as you look at them: unless you want them to.

Frayed silk carrier rods

Resolved Sample

Sketch of idea

 I had a little help when making the pieces for the background!!

My exotic water bird sit amongst the bullrushes and guards it's nest.

Background : spray painted cotton with pleats and tucks topped with tailor tack using two threads through the neeedle; water is blue sprayed Ployester textures with Grilon thread and machine stitched into the folds. Night sky is also sprayed Polyester sheer.

Bird : body is layers of machine pattern, beak and eye in whip stitch, tail and wing in free edged pieces with sari silk to finish wing. Legs in free stitching.

The edges are turned under to the finished size to show the tail extending beyond the lower edge.

 Close-up of bird and nest.

Egg in layers of cable st.
Nest is "lined" with feathers made on soluble fabric and built with knotted, looped and twisted yarns.

I am quite pleased with the way this has turned out.  It has included several techniques from Chapters 7 & 8 and I think the red focal point is in the right place.  As the free fabric shapes of the wing and tail are curved, so technically on the bias, and have not frayed as well as I had hoped. The tailor tacks tend to unravel too and I should have secured the thread ends to prevent this.

Cpter 7 Stitched Texture

Stitching to Create Texture

Cable Stitch
31. Bird is taken from P24 of research, worked on silk dupion in a hoop to try to prevent puckering.
 (Is this a Jub-Jub bird?).

Whip Stitch
also worked in a hoop.

 32 & 33.   Based on the tail of the bird design on a  plate ( p23 of research).  Stitched on cotton with a Calico backing.  I'm not sure the green was a good choice.

Couching

34. Stitched on cotton with a calico backing.  I chose yarns of a similar colour so I could use the same thread and bobin for stitching, which worked well.

  

35. Three layers of Banana yarn

36. Jumbo knittting yarn with two layers of loops.  This gives lots of texture but the presser foot kept getting caught in the loops.

37. Three layers of tubular Rayon knitting yarn knotted along the length.  the knots are closer together on each succcessive layer.  It took longer to knot the yarn than it did to stitch!

38. Banana yarn again, twisted into loops.  I like the unevenness of the yarn as this gives added texture.

39. Jumbo knittting yarn again, untwisted as it was stitched.  I like the floating threads which appear to be unstitched.

 It was interesting to see how this and  the Banana yarn could produce different effects.

40. Bundles of threads using some stranded Rayon  that got tangled when I undid the hank to wind it onto a reel.  There are four layers and I like the way some of  the ends didn't get trapped by the stitching. ( a year ago I would have considered this to be untidy).

Utility pattern to create texture
 
41. Pattern 3 - Varioverlock with four layers

 42. Pattern 4 - Running Stitch with five layers

 43. Pattern 22 - Gathering Stitch, five layers

 44. Pattern 24 - Jersey Stitch, five layers

 Basting. 
45. This is difficult on my machine but I like the cut part.  This could be useful!

 Tailor Tacks
46. I bought a foot when I read Pamela Watts' book a couple of years ago.

 Top left: st length 1.5 

Bottom left : st length 0.6

Top right :.0.6 cut

Bottom right 1.5 cut

Chapter 7 cont.

1. Using an idea from Maggie Smith, I coloured a piece of Tyvek with Pental Paintstiks and stitched it to a piece of coloured silk.  When it is heated it shrinks  as I found to my cost in Module One!

2. Whilst the heat gun was out I burned some holes in a pice of Sizeflor and pushed a cotton fabric through them.  This was easier said than done because when the second hole was filled it pulled the fabric out of the first.  The back of the Sizeflor was sprayed with 505 and each piece ironed into place as it was worked then free machined into place.

3. Silk is coloured with silk paints and quilted onto a wadding and backing fabric using straight stitch (foot on) using toning threads.

Gathering onto fusible webbing.
4 & 5. Cotton was used for both samples; it is the only fabric which creases well!

Ruching

6. Free hand using a Polyester sheer gathered onto  Cottton using an automatic pattern

7. A free hand  Gingham strip held in place with free machining

8. The old Singer pleater fits my Frister and Rossman portable and was used to work the following samples. It will pleat every stitch, every 5th stitch oand attach to a backing fabric at the same time.

9. Pleating every 5th stitch on fine cotton(above) and the same, with sections of every stitch (below)

10. Narrow strips pleated every stitch (above) and varied (below)

11. Pleating every stitch on cotton sateen and every 5th stitch on top and every 5th in opposite directions below.

12. Sheer fabirc pleated and stitched to a backing fabric.

13. And a narrow strip pleated every stitch

14. There is also a gathering foot

15. the  stitch length varies the amount gathered

16. on Cotton (above) and Silk Habutai (below)

 Pintucks

17&18. . On Cotton, straight and wavy lines.  I don't have a pintuck foot but I think the varied spacing of the lines adds interest.

19. Straight and wavy lines on Rayon crepe

20. The same on Rayon satin but it was a little too thick to get good tucks.

21. On Polyester sheer but the tucks aren't very clear in the photo.

 

 

Pleats and Tucks

 

22. Narrow rucks using the blind hemming foot and altered needle position

 
I have a really good book, "The Art of Manipulating Fabric" by Colette Wolff and tried some ideas from it.

23. Grid of tucks using the quilting foot as a guide

24. Random tucks using the quilting foot

25. Shell edged tucks using Blind Hem stitch on sheer fabric

26. Random pleats stitched on decorated fabric

 
 27. and the reverse

28. Narrow pleats stitched down in alternate directions

Holes
29. I tried Hessian for this.  The grid worked quite well and is threaded with a Ratstail cord

 30.  Free maching on Hessian, not entirely successful.  Going shopping for scrim!!