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julielivingstone

~ It isn't always about getting what you want. Sometimes it's about wanting what you've got.

julielivingstone

Monthly Archives: March 2016

Long story, short message

15 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by julielivingstone in Uncategorized

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blog, books, design, pattern

A book arrived in the mail this week, I had quite forgotten ordering it. Actually it was one of two, the first I remembered, but I had forgotten that since shipping would be as much for two books as one, I had sneaked the second into my order!

More about both books later, but the one which starts today’s adventure in the sewing blog world is called Artful Machine Embroidery by Bobbi Bullard. I don’t have an embroidery machine as such, so it might seem a curious choice, but having looked at some of the book on Google books I thought it had a good deal of content about general design, placement, colour etc., which would be useful for all sorts of garment creation, not just embroidery. Those things are the part of the creative process that I sometimes struggle with.

This is a really long and complicated story, but we are getting there, I promise!

I looked up Bobbi Bullard on Google, since I hadn’t seen her work before, and came across some pictures from another blog, Thunderpaws Threads. There were several pictures of garments made with Bobbi’s designs, and I spent some time reading, until I came upon the subject of this post. (See, I said we would get there eventually!). It’s the pattern at the end of the link above, from Hot Patterns, another indie pattern company I’ve not heard of before. It’s called a Blouse Back T, which is like a tee shirt in front, but with a panel set in just under the shoulders at the back, cut wider than expected, which can be made out of woven fabric, hence the ‘blouse back’.

This quite appeals to me. I’m not normally a wearer of tee shirts, not in their simplest incarnation anyway. I like a little more structure to my clothes, and also a vee neck rather than a round neck, which most tee shirts seem to have by default. I have often wondered about that, whether it is simply because a round neck is easier to put trim around, with a vee you always have the problem of how to get a really nice neat join at centre front.

It’s already added to my list of ‘someday projects’, which sadly keeps getting longer and longer. Or is that sad, I wonder? Would it be worse to have nothing that one wanted to do? It’s also a cassic example of how a little ‘blog wandering’ can lead to all sorts of possibilities. There is always something I haven’t seen before, something which sparks an idea.

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Transfer Dying Workshop – the sequel

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by julielivingstone in Uncategorized

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colour, design, fabric, ideas, transfer dyes

As if to prove that prior preparation and planning cannot always be relied upon, the result of the workshop was a little mixed. There were, as always, variables which I had not foreseen.
The first of these was that the colours are very hard, not to say impossible, to predict. We first did a test strip, using the neat dyes, about 8 different colours. We painted a small circle of each color on a strip of paper, and hurried off to test it on our fabric. Not too hurriedly, the dye must be dry on the paper before transferring it to the fabric. My results:

test strip of dyes and colours

Test strip

As you can probably see, the colour of the dye on the paper is quite different to the colour on the fabric. And I think that on a different fabric it would be different again, so there is no substitute for trying the colours you want on the fabric you are going to use. We then did some more tests, this time mixing two colours together:

test strip of mixed dye colours

Mixed colours

Again, the result on fabric is not very much like the dye on the paper!

We then went on to experiment with different ways of creating designs, and it seems I didn’t take any more pictures. However, I did get some dye put onto fabric, which possibly might end up as a garment at some point. I also came home with some sheets of paper with dye already applied, which I should be able to use somehow.

There are lots of ways of getting colour onto fabric using these dyes, some of which I would not have thought of. You can be straightforward, and paint a picture or design onto the paper, and transfer it onto the fabric. Naturally if you do this the image is reversed, so care is needed if  you are using text.

Alternatively, you can cover the paper with dye, then cut shapes out of it to create a design on the fabric. You could create sheets of flat colour, or mix dyes to a greater or lesser degree to add texture and depth. You can cut out a single shape, like a stencil, or build an image using multiple shapes like a collage. The shapes can be a single colour, patterns or textures. Then you can always print over the top of an existing print with another. A second print made from the same paper will be less bright, but can still be attractive. When you have exhausted the possibilities of transfer dying you can move on to painting with regular fabric paints, or stitching. Really, there is endless scope. The only thing not endless is the amount of time available for all this creativity! However, always optimistic, I am getting together with some other members to buy some dyes, we are going to share them among us so that none of us is too overburdened by yet more stuff!

The dyes come from KraftKolour.

I’m sure I shall find a use for the dyes at some time in the future, apparently they keep for ages, so I have plenty of time. And I am never going to be bored!

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