Sew

Bump in the Road

I encountered a bump in the road last night, on my journey to churn out 21 new works for a show we are haning on Sunday.  Last night, while attempting to cook dinner, I managed to get my finger jammed into a drawer, thusly crushing my right index finger tip -  yeah I was in a LOT of pain!

I'm feeling a little better today just not using this finger, which is not only slowing me down but is now causing me to become more inventive, innovative maybe, in finishing my works.  Stitching isn't working out so well today, maybe tomorrow. 

So now I'm "what iffing" what if I try just glueing my fabrics directly to the canvas, w/o stitching, instead of stitching them, applying matte medium and the whole process.  Is the meaning and intent the same?  What does the image say?  Is the story now different somehow, and if so then how?  More tomorrow.

Sewing Rusted Fabrics Tutorial



Sewing rusted fabrics is no different that stitching any other fabric except, and that's a big EXCEPT, when the fabrics are heavily rusted!  Then there are all sorts of problems that arise. 

For moderately rusted fabrics as seen in the above photo, a heavy cotton thread and a sewing machine needle with a large eye, like a leather needle, work well. 

But what does one do when the fabric itself or the thread shreds during the stitching process??? 

This tutorial will help you stitch those fabrics and get the look you are wanting.  I highly recommend having some extra rusted samples on hand and taking good notes on which processes worked for each sample, BEFORE you start the large commission piece.  Doing so will guarantee fewer headaches in the future ;-)

Materials Needed:
Rusted fabrics
iron on interfacing of some sort I use Mistyfuse TM
Sewer's Aid TM (Dritz) - liquid
Fray Check TM (Dritz) - liquid
Needles with large eye such as a leather needle
Heavy cotton or poly blend threads, rayon and silk thread will only shred to pieces in this process.
Nymo or Fireline for heavily rusted areas that you don't/didn't want to discharge.

Crashed Computer

Well it's official the RAID system is trashed on my computer. We got it boot up last night, checked the errors and ran a defragmentation scan (31% fragmented files is a lot) it took all night to run that scan and fix the errors. And hope against all hope it started doing it again - the clunking noise in the hard drives. I'll run a diagnostics test on the RAID tomorrow but I already know the results based on it's performace.

The only bright spot in this whole ordeal is the hard drives are half what I paid for them 4 years ago! The down side is I'll have to wait a few weeks to do the repairs as sales have been rather slow of late. I guess this is a sign that I should spend more time dyeing, painting, and stitching fabric! ;-) Now that's a bright spot I can embrace!!!

Brooch No. 1

Above: front of brooch painted silk dupioni, wool batting Below: painted silk dupioni


And it may well be my last one at that! I've been seeing all of these lovely hand made brooches from assorted scrap fabrics and thought I'd make one for myself, well... Lets just say I need a new bobbin race for my Janome 6500 now! The bobbin thread got tangled somehow with the tension arm on the bobbin race and is now broken! Luckily I had another bobbin race on hand to finish the top stitching but it's my spare for bobbin stitching with chunky threads. I'm hoping the bobbin race can be repaired as these parts are not exactly cheap these days.