After my post about tyvek the other day, I was intrigued with the gathering effect when you stitch fabric on one side and heat the tyvek on the other, so I had a play.
In the first sample, I stitched a grid, and filled in some of the squares to stop the tyvek shrinking. As you can just see on the right, this worked, but the flat areas need some definition, perhaps with beading.
The next sample, I did a rough sketch of a leaf, filling in the leaf and tacking the tyvek down loosely around it.
You can see the leaf is flat in the centre, but again needs defining. If I didd the stitching with a heavy thread in the bobbin and tight bobbin, loose upper (
cable stitch), or did this after the shrinking, perhaps this would make a good effect.
Here, I have added batting to the leaf to define it more.
In this sample, I stitched clam shells/scallops. It is hard to see in the photo, due to such a dark fabric, but this makes oval puffs, which again could be defined with stitching.
In this sample, I stitched wavy lines and the puffs looked like curver shirring. The puffs were not as defined in this sample, as I put some light iron on interfacing on the back of the fabric to see what would happen if the fabric was heavier. Instead of shrinking, the tyvek tended to form holes, which is also useful, but not what I was looking for here.
In this sample I sewed relatively close straight lines and the fabric really bunched up nicely in lines. It looks just like shirring with elastic, but of course, it doesn't stretch. quite nice.
In this last sample, I used a wavy spiral design to try and get some spots and puffs. I also sandwiched the tyvek in batting to try and slow the shrinking. This sample, although a bit dark to see the definition again, gave a really soft and defined texture that would really pop with some stitching and beads.
I think I will spend the next few evenings adding a bit of stitching to these samples, then I will show them to you.
I will hopefully be doing a workshop with
Neroli Henderson at
ATASDA Vic next week on tyvek and such, perhaps she will give me a few ideas. I am sure she will.
Keep on playing, it keeps art fresh.
