Tuesday 28 February 2012

What Am I Going To Do...



with this?  It is a piece of Lutradur 100, which I've transfer dyed...but not very successfully.  It's double postcard sized (12" by 8"), and whilst it's fine at the top, it fades away to obscurity at the bottom.  It's tempting to just throw it away and start again, but at present, nothing usable is getting thrown out (the personal stuff is on my other blog here, if you're interested).  So... I started off by cutting it up.  I don't have a rotary cutter and mat upstairs at present; they live out in  the Little Green Shed, my studio at the bottom of the garden.  So I decided to cut it into a square shape, and did so the old fashioned way (I can remember doing this at school, with paper).

You make a diagonal fold, lining up the short end against the long end, like so...
  and then fold it across the other diagonal, making a triangle with a little rectangle sticking out from the bottom, a bit like a house shape (albeit with a very large roof...), so... and cut the rectangle off.

Now, that looks a bit better... the eye isn/t distracted by that pale bit, and can see the overall design.  So, I started to trial it with different fabrics.  This is a lilac/turquoise silk (remarkably crushed, as you can see...).  I don't think this does anything for either the silk or the Lutradur.  It does strengthen the colours, towards the blue end of the spectrum, but you lose the sheen of the silk for no good reason; good choice for colour, but bad choice of cloth. 
 Whilst Lutradur 100 is semi transparent, you really need a good contrast for any patterning to show through. 

Here it is over a piece of cotton which I printed using a piece of wood.  You can see the patterning really quite clearly here.  So, I have set it up, ready for stitch... see what you think.  How would you stitch it?



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