Most of my designs involve applique, because appliqueed
fabric can add such rich dimensions to embroideries. These days I usually use
handpainted fabric for applique because most commercially available fabric
(with the possible exception of Fairy Frost Glitz) isn’t all that interesting.
But even hand-painted fabric isn’t appropriate for everything, so I’ve been
looking for new ways of producing fabric with various interesting finishes.
You can of course simply print fabric with motifs or
textures that you need for specific designs. I found some nice carving blocks
on the Internet, and cut them into printing blocks with various textures.
Printing blocks cut with different textures
These particular blocks are useful because they can suggest either feathers on birds or scales on fish. I do know that these
printed designs look a bit rough and crude, but that effect is deliberate. I
want to use the stamped fabric as part of an embroidery with a slightly
primitive, folky feel, and a slick, clean print wouldn’t be appropriate
Irregular printing goes well in a project with a folk-art feel
Second, I’ve been using the embellishing machine to produce
fabric with unusual surfaces. There are various ways this can be done, but I’ve
started by felting roving into cotton fabric. Roving is just combed fibre as
used by spinners and weavers, and can be bought in a wide variety of fibre and
colour. Here are two kinds of roving: wool dyed in shades of blue, and a
metallic gold fibre of some kind
Blue and gold roving
All you need to do is to felt the roving into a light cotton
fabric and you have a textile with very interesting colours and textures. Here
is some of the gold roving after felting, and also some kind of pink
fluorescent plastic fibre treated in the same way
Felted roving to use as an applique fabric
The gold fabric would work very well as the coat of an animal, and I have a
hare and a deer in mind that I can use this with. As for the pink fluorescent
material, it suggests some kind of fantasy animal. Or, done with red and yellow
fibre it would also suggest fire or sun