Project 3 Stage 6 Machine exercise

Combining textures and colour effects

It’s a good job this is a colour exercise and not something needing the perfect finished article!   When I dissolved the water soluble fabric I knew I’d not put enough stitches in to hold the fabric together so to say I’d made lace is something of an understatement. That said I was pretty pleased with what the colours did.

I used a standard straight stitch then a zig zag on top but I got really bored with doing it.  When I introduced black I decided to use some free machine embroidery for a bit of variety.

• The blue/yellow mix was interesting because the yellow became green.  This was the first panel I did and it’s the most dense and therefore is more stable.  After that my boredom started to show and I didn’t put enough stitches in.
• Red bobbin/yellow reel gave me a lovely mixture that really showed orange
• Blue bobbin/red reel produced a red/violet that could have been mixed on a palette
• The dense black I introduced did a good practical job of holding things together when I stitched across the threads but not when I stitched with the grain although it looks pretty.

I found the water soluble fabric quite tricky to work with.  At first it was difficult because it was so floppy and sticky.  After a time it started to pucker up so the yellow/red section looks shrunken. Last time (which was the only time) I used water soluble fabric I just used free machine embroidery and the puckering didn’t seem so much of a problem.

All in all, whilst this may not be the world’s greatest piece of work it taught me a lot about using this material.  I need to find a way to stop the puckering and control the result a bit more.  I wonder how it would respond to an embroidery hoop? 

I never could resist a challenge so here I am 24 hours later having tried again with both a hoop and the benefit of yesterdays experience.  I began by stitching in a circular motion all over with white thread.  I hoped this would give me a firm base to work on.  I then did blue bobbin/yellow reel, red bobbin/yellow reel, blue bobbin/black reel and finally a bit of each.

Looked at from the top side

Looked at from the underside

Once again I had problems with my tension so on the top the blue barely shows through the yellow.  Once I'd sorted the tension out things started to look better.  The yellow just peeps through the red - very attractive, and the black seems to drain the blue of its vibrancy.  My favourite is the multi colour section.  The bits of yellow that show through seem to dance. 

I was much happier with this piece of work.  First of all it hung together which is important.  But mostly I was happier because I enjoyed doing it; I wasn't bored like yesterday.  I think that's because I knew what I wanted to achieve; I had an aim.  I think not all the learning is about stitching!