Wondering Wednesday : Burning Evolon

Can you burn out Evolon the same way that you burn out lutradur?  Err...yes and no.  You can use a heatgun or a soldering iron on Evolon, just as you can on lutradur.  However, because of the nylon content in the Evolon, it will burn more quickly than lutradur, meaning that to get a similar effect, you really need to control the amount of heat you are using very much more than with lutradur.  You do that by varying the distance of the heat gun away from the cloth. 

Gently heating the cloth with a heat gun, varying the position of the heat gun, and its distance from the cloth, you will first see some distortion (a bit like Tyvek, when heated), and then small holes, like this.

 Blast it with a heat gun, however, and you may get a little discolouration, as here, and much bigger holes.

If you look closely at the second photo, you will see that blasting it with a heatgun produces hard, slightly shiny edges.  If this is the look you want, that's how to do it; otherwise, have patience, and keep that heatgun moving!

Try It Out Tuesday : Lutradur Lace

If you have used water soluble embroidery paper or fabric, you have probably made needle lace to embellish a piece of work.  If you take a scrap of any weight of Lutradur (except, perhaps XL; I haven't tried it, but I don't think it's worth it...), and free motion stitch into it, in interlapping circles (or in my case, rough approximations of circles).  My preferred weight for this is Lutradur 30.  As you stitch into the cloth, you will find that it distorts and puckers readily.  That's not a problem, as you will be burning out most of the cloth anyway. 

You can use this technique on either plain white or coloured fabric; here, I've used transfer dyed Lutradur and a variegated thread.  The photographs have been taken over  a brown envelope, just to let you see the holes.  You might remember that I used this technique to make a flower here.  Why not try it with some scrap, and see how you get on?  I prefer it to 'lace' made with water soluble materials, as it is stronger, and, if you don't burn out all of the fabric, you get the remains of the cloth adding colour as well as strength.

Try It Out Thursday : That Piece of Lutradur...

...really did change my perception of that quilt.  If you've been following the saga, you will know that so far, I've taken a piece of lutradur which I'd printed on using acrylic paints, and added it to an existing quilt.  After stitching it onto the quilt, I coloured it, and then... dear reader... I burned it.  But to my surprise, I didn't do anything like the amount of burning I had intended.  The original thought was to get rid of almost all of the lutradur, leaving only the paint marks and the quilt below.  In fact, I liked what was happening on the surface so much, that I kept a significant part of the lutradur.  Only problem was, that the bottom half of the quilt looked stronger than the top.  So, dear reader, I bit the bullet and... cut it up.  I ended up with this:

Much smaller...and the focus is now on the focal point, where it should be, and not wandering down the quilt wondering why those quilted lines are there...  I did have a small problem, though.  Where the paper stuck to the lutradur/paint, was one or two little white splodges.  So...I picked off what I could, and then coloured the remainder with some acquarel watercolour crayons. 

This final shot shows you the melted lutradur.  It's interesting to see the contrast between the stitched cloth (cotton, stitched with heavy thread in the bobbin) and the melted lutradur; some of the stitch is hidden underneath the lutradur, other parts are exposed, making interesting shapes. 

When I teach a workshop, I always ask the same question at the end of it; what have you learned?  I wonder what you have learned by following this exercise?  Please, if you would, share the first answer that comes into your head in the comments below.  Often, by sharing learning with other people, we recognise things about the whole experience, that we don't get by keeping our thoughts to ourselves.

I do hope you found this exercise interesting. I'm quite pleased with the new, smaller piece, though I do feel there is possibly still more to be done with it.  I'll live with it a while, and see.  What do you think?  Is there something you think should be added?  I can't promise to follow your suggestions, but I will think about them, and tell you what I think in return....  I'd really like this to be an interactive community; it's difficult to talk into a vacuum.  If you don't tell me what you want, then you might not get it...and that would be a shame.

Try It Out Thursday : Finally Finished!

Well, if you remember, I asked for comments on Tuesday.  The two I got were unanimous... that flower was too strongly coloured...right shape, right size, just wrong everything else!  So, I thought... what could I do about it? 

As you know, when you transfer dye something, you get more than  one print from the paper (up to five, if you're lucky, but at least three).  So I took another piece of the lutradur from the same dye batch, and stitched into it, as you can see below.

Then, I cut out two freehand floral shapes, put them on top of the piece, and added a freshwater pearl, like so:

Well, yes, it's an improvement... but it's not quite right.  So, out with the heat gun... remember, if you try this, that your small shape will get Even Smaller when you heat it, so a. cut it a bit bigger than you want it and b. don't hold it in your fingers when using the heatgun (I pinned mine down to a table top using a pencil). 

As you can see from the close up, below, I've added a tiny bit of the Zeelon that covers the whole piece, just to link it properly to the whole.  And there we are, finished at last!