fiber arts!

holy shit i adore those stitch markers where are they from?

 

oh man those are cute as hell

 

so i just did some measuring and the skirt hem i wanna embroider is 6.75m long (a little over 22ft). That means that the panel i wanna do, which is 25cm long if I include a little bit of separation space between the panels i gotta do 27 panels

rip my wrist?

Does anyone have any tips for idiots like me who wanna find out why handembroidered anything is so expensive

 

My only real advice is to not get overwhelmed, and to plan on it taking a long time.

If you can, figure out what the longest period of time you can comfortably embroider for is. For me, it's about half an hour, but I have kinda janky hands and wrists from larping. Set aside a period of time for it every day you can, and make it part of your routine. Get a rough idea of how much you can embroider in that time, and plan out about how long this is going to take.

 

i love the colors!

 

I started on my new (MASSIVE) embroidery project!

the pattern (which I'll have to repeat 27 times.....OTL) In retrospect, i should not have gone for embroidering a fabric that's that light but Fuck It.

Spoiler

And the first progress by making three rosehips and learning a new stitch (The french knot)

Spoiler

 

I’m pleased as punch with how my fabric dying experiments came out. The two main secrets turned out to be mixing the dye with corn starch and heat setting it with the iron before washing.

 

o shit do you have a tutorial/instructions for that maybe? That looks super good

 

It’s actually super easy! I’ll do a little tutorial while I’m riding in the car. (No pictures, sorry. I didn’t get pictures of the process.)

What you need:
Liquid fabric dye
Corn starch
Measuring spoons
Glass bowls
paint brushes
Iron and ironing board
Towel (black is best. It’ll get stained)

mix the liquid fabric dye with roughly equal parts corn starch glass bowls until desired consistency is achieved. More corn starch for thicker paint, less for thinner. No need to add water if you started with liquid dye. Starting with powder dye, you may have to experiment a bit.

paint onto clean, dry fabric. Make sure to use natural dye for natural fabric and synthetic for synthetic fabric. Have the folded towel underneath to absorb the dye and wetness soaking through the fabric. Keeps your design from spreading and blurring.

Let dry. Takes about ten minutes.

heat set with an iron by laying and pressing down on the dry dye. Don’t rub it around or you risk smearing the dye.

wash and dry on your normal laundry settings.

I painted in layers, lighter purple and green first, then wash and dry, dark purple and touching up the green on the second pass.

 

that's incredibly useful, thanks!

 

One more thing to add. If you have a beeswax crayon (Like the ones you get in egg dying kits around Easter) (an uncolored candle works too) you can draw on the fabric where you don’t want the dye to be and it’ll give you a good negative space or a really clean border.

 

First panel down, 26 to go!

 

im not sure whether to keep it like this - the original pattern has an extra pattern of crosses around the edge, but that would involve more working with metallic thread.

 

I like it, looks finished to me!

 

It looks finished! Slightly sparse, but that honestly adds to the hilarity, esp given that I'm familiar with the source material for the joke.