Sampling

I’m back and I’ve had quite a productive weekend. The first thing I got going on was my least favourite activity on the C&G course – sampling. I was a good girl though and sampled 3 construction techniques for the piecing of my next assessment piece, although only one was new to me!

I used my half scale painting to trace pattern pieces for sampling. I took an area from the top left corner and traced it onto dressmaker’s tissue paper

and used the following 3 different techniques.
1) Using iron-on interfacing as the template, which remains on the fabric and becomes part of the finished product.

2) Using freezer paper as the template, which is removed after sewing.

3) Using a dressmaker’s wheel and tracing paper to trace the sewing lines.

I used blue carbon paper here to show up in the photo. Usually I would use yellow on light fabrics and white or yellow on dark fabrics.

On the finished sample the top three rows were made with method 1, the next 3 rows with method 2 and the bottom 3 rows with method 3.

I didn’t like using freezer paper. I think it works well with straight edges, but was no good on the curves. The fabric was too stiff to be able to manipulate it properly to sew the curves and it kept coming away from the fabric with too much bending and twisting. Iron-on interfacing works well and gives accurate results. I use the lightest weight you can buy, so it doesn’t add any bulk and the fabric still handles well.

However for speed of working you can’t beat using dressmaker’s wheel and carbon paper. Just pin the pattern pieces to the fabric, trace round and away you go. The results are as accurate as using the iron-on interfacing, if you take care with the tracing. With the other two methods you have an extra step, transferring the tissue paper pattern onto the interfacing or the freezer paper. And you have to remember to reverse the pattern too, or else you end up making the mirror image of your design.

The most important step is to make the original templates with dressmakers tissue accurately and numbering them. And then marking the top of each piece before you cut them apart! That’s what all those little arrows are about.

So I think I shall go with method 3 for construction. (Suprise, surprise )

The second productive thing I did was dyeing 16 pieces of fabric for the wallhanging. I’ve just given them a spin the the washing machine after all the rinsing and the fabric is hanging up to dry. As the colours will get even lighter when dry, I don’t think I’ve hit the right shade of browns. I may have to go with commercially dyed fabric for that. I find it hard to get a good dark brown. Despite having mostly black dye powder in the mix, it all seems to have washed out. But then black is a tricky colour to get good results with. The browns will be a useful addition to the stash – the paler end of the gradation has produced some nice pinks and lavenders!

The other colours are looking good. I shall decide when they are dried whether I shall over-dye any of them with shibori techniques as I originally planned, or whether I think they are fine as they are. I had to squash some into large yoghurt pots so there is quite a bit of mottling that may well be enough on its own.

I’ll post some photos, when they are dry and ironed.