A glittering new idea

I’m really excited about a new technique I'm working with at the moment. At a painting workshop I went to a few months ago, I saw some paintings embellished with gold leaf. The effect was spectacular, and made quite ordinary paintings look very exciting. I’ve been thinking about trying the same thing with embroidery, and the other day I finally got round to ordering some gold, silver, copper and multi-coloured leaf from a supplier. (If anyone wants to try the same thing, I got the materials from http://www.stonehouses.co.uk/. They have a very good selection of metallic foils at quite reasonable prices, and their service is excellent)

For the first trial I appliqueed a simple fish and then glued some metallic foil to the fabric with PVA glue. I then embroidered details over the foil. I had expected the foil to break up under the embroidery, but it was surprisingly robust – once the glue had dried I couldn’t even scrape the leaf off the fabric with a blade. True, there was one place where the foil did flake a bit, but that was because I hadn’t applied the glue evenly. In fact, the whole thing looks so sturdy that it might even be washable in a gentle hand-wash.  OK, I know the colours on the fish are all wrong, but this was just a first trial, after all.

The colours may be wrong but the idea is exciting

At the moment I’m spending most of my time devising designs which will make full and best use of this interesting new technique, so you can expect more of the same thing in the next couple of months