Friday, September 2, 2011

Hand Stitching on Tyvek samples

A few posts a go I wrote about creating textures on fabric using tyvek underneath (here).
With most of the samples, I felt they needed some embellishment to pretty them up.  so I have endeavoured to do this and  here are the results.
Here is the first.  If you remember, this was stitched in a grid with some of the squares filled in.  The filled in squares did not shrink.  I stitched around these squares and added a bead in the centre to define them.
For this sample, stitched in a wave and spiral pattern, I couched some machine wrapped cords over the stitched lines.  The green ones have the best contrast.  They all help to make the puffing look wavy.
For this one, I couched around the leaf shape which was heavily stitched and did not shrink.
With this sample, which was stitched in straight lines and created a shirred look, I tried three things.
At the top I have stitched over the stitching lines with a gold thread.
Next, I have couched some machine wrapped cord along the stitching lines.
At the bottom, I have beaded randomly on the stitching lines.
All three look interesting, especially the fact that the embellishments are sometimes hidden and sometimes peep out, but the beading looks the best.
This last sample was the one I liked the most.  Even though I stitched a shell pattern, the puffs created by the tyvek looked diamond shaped, so I couched down gold thread to emphasise the diamonds and beaded each intersection.  It looks very mediaeval.

Sometimes when we experiment with interesting textures and surfaces, we forget that stitch is an important part of the design process which can highlight, define and improve what we have done.
So, when your experiments don't look the way you thought they would, (and do they ever?) think about how you could use stitch to alter them or embellish them.

Even I, who can put 16 bobbins worth into a sixteen inch square of fabric, sometimes neglect stitch in favour of straight texture, but stitch gives textures character.

Add a bit of stitch to your world.