Wednesday 19 March 2008

I've Been Playing!!

Yesterday I played around with some things that I have been wanting to try.


On this one, I started out with a piece of green silk material, I thought some of this would be showing through, but not much did. Next time I would use something plainer. Then I piled on small pieces of green fabric, lots of embroidery thread offcuts and various fibres. I then finished it off by laying a piece of cold water soluble Romeo on top. I then did lots of machine stitching all over it. The romeo stuck abit when sewing so I did the sewing on the material side with the romeo on the bottom and this worked well. I did lots of stitching making sure that it all overlapped. Then I swirled it around in cold water and the romeo dissolved really easily. This was the first time I have used romeo and I think its great and easy to use. I think this is a really great way to make a luscious background.

For this one I used the same silk fabric, embroidery threads and fibres and topped it off with a piece of green organza. I pinned it all around the edges and then did lots of machine stitching all over it like the first one. I then took it outside, wearing a mask thing over my nose and mouth, I used my embossing heat tool to burn holes in the organza so the other layers and fibres showed through. The material on the edges burnt away easily but the organza in the stitched area didn't burn as easily. When I've read about this technique I think they use a different heat tool, not sure if it might be a soldering iron. The heat tool I used is like a mini hairdryer so you don't have as much control over the areas that will burn. But it was a good experiment and I quite like the 2 pieces I came up with. I would like to use these in some garden pieces but haven't thought any further than that yet.

2 comments:

Jane LaFazio said...

both of these pieces look waay fun! I've used the watersoluable stuff and it's really fun. I especially loved your burned piece. I want to try that too!
hope you're feeling TONS better!

Barbara said...

Thanks Jane for leaving a comment. I'm feeling alot better now but it took a couple of weeks to get over. It was lots of fun doing these, you'd enjoy doing the burnt one, you can achieve lots of different effects.