Fun With Fabrics

I've started mucking about with fabrics now. I went to a thrift store and picked out a selection of colours and I'm pretty pleased with what I found. Especially the fluorescent pink, which is from a kid's sleeping bag. I'll be using that colour in moderation though. Once I had my fabrics, I was ready to try my paint and string designs in a new medium... transferable dye.

I just recreated the effect of the paint and string on paper, but used the dye instead of the paint, like so.

Then you place the paper face down on your fabric, and iron on the design. I tried the transferable dye on scraps of all my fabrics. You can see that the dye is more vibrant on some pieces. This is because the transferable dyes are intended for synthetic fabrics only. Thus the more cottony fabrics, such as the gray and light pink, create a softer effect. I have to say, I'm happy for the variations. They range from a stark x-ray look to a ghostly imprint. It will create a more interesting pallette for my quilt.

Here's an example of how much of a difference the temperature of the iron makes. The darker image was pressed at a higher temperature. This can get dangerous though, because some fabrics melt or shrivel at high heats.

I also tried out a little applique. I heard about this great product called "Steam A Seam" from some quilting experts I know. It allows you to fuse applique shapes directly onto your work without any sewing! Wow, right? Well, I tried it out, as you can see, and it was very simple to use and I give it four stars. My only problem with it is evident from my above photo: this stuff is supposed to prevent fraying at the edges, but that fabric is clearly fraying.

Here is my applique with the flourescent pink fabric. There was less fraying with this one, but as you can see, I need to keep my iron temperature low when dealing with nylon, or it'll melt!