Textile Text

As conversation is a major element in my work, I need to find the best way of incorporation written text in my projects, using the dissolvable fabric and machine embroidery.  The problem I have, is that I just want the text and no base fabric, but if I am not careful this will unravel as soon as I wash the dissolvable away and I will be just left with unravelled thread.

I looked on Pinterest to see how other people incorporated text. These are some examples I liked, particularly the example on the right, but note it is paper and not textile.

I decided to experiment  with a combination of machine embroidery, dissolvable fabric and paper.

This was a rough example of letters joined by a thin thread, however it wasn’t very successful when I washed out the dissolvable fabric. The structure became unclear and it looked quite messy.  It is possible that if I pinned the piece in place on a board and then washed the fabric away, it might keep the structure better.

This was a little more successful as I used a small zig-zag stitch, which gives a better density to the text, but you can’t get very fine detail and you need the words to be a reasonable size otherwise the text is not clear to read.  I will definitely experiment with this some more.

In the photo on the left, I have created a free machine embroidery panel and then on a separate piece of dissolvable attached to the top, stitched a phrase.  When I washed out the fabric, the phrase  was not very obvious,  so I would have to consider back lighting to aid reading. It was still not very obvious, but I liked that fact as it added interest and would be good if I wanted to convey a hidden message.

In the photo on the right, I used paper letters sandwiched between two pieces of dissolvable fabric, but it wasn’t very successful, as the machine needle cut through the paper as I was sewing.  I tried a thicker handmade paper which was better but not brilliant.  However, this might be worth trying with various papers and explore the different results.

 

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