Saturday, March 26, 2016

Almost too small again!

I thought I would try to make another small piece for the charity sale at the Fibre Arts week at Ballarat. This time I printed a photo out onto silk.

As there are two charities, one 10cm x10cm and one 15cm x 15 cm, I carefully worked out the sizes of the images in Photoshop. I even allowed an extra 2 centimetres for shrinkage.

I put the images onto one piece of silk twice as I didn't want to waste the pre-prepared silk. It works on the inkjet printer quite well - when you have enough ink. I did get one quite green print out as we only seemed to have yellow and blue. I thought I would use them anyway, just to see if I could work out a good way to stabilise the fabric, but that was when I realised the images don't translate from Photoshop to the printer all that well.

Not to be put off, I resized the images and worked out how to make them stay the right size for the printer - I can't actually remember what I did now, so will have to go through it all again next time I try this method. Maybe I used the A4 paper setting even though the silk is the US paper size. Something to think about later.
I printed the smaller one too close to the edge and the silk shredded a little when I took off the backing. 

After printing out the images, I ironed them onto adhesive interfacing. I hoped this would stop too much shrinkage and allow me to get away with not using a hoop.

It worked to some degree. One of the images was only 13cm. I have mounted it onto some matt board to make it the required 15 x 15cm.

The other was - just - the 10 x 10cm. We are not supposed to mount that one, so I hope it is sturdy enough.

The interfacing worked ok. It did wrinkle a bit but I ironed it from the back when I was finished and got out most of the wrinkles. It still needs some work but will be ok for the charity sales.

4 comments:

mycamerandme365 said...

They look lovely Mary, well done!

Anonymous said...

I am always amazed at the breadth of skills you apply to textiles. These look great to my eyes! Pat

Mary said...

Thanks ladies,
I like to dabble. I get these creative urges to see how things are done. Then I move on. But I think I am gradually finding my medium(s) and have even thrown out some stuff (gasp!).

Janet Spink said...

This is beautiful as usual thank you Mary for sharing. Janet