This week I painted a batch of lace and organza. I love using these soft laces because they offer texture and shifting color as another overlay on the surface.
These are not especially elegant laces. The organza is plain poly organza. I often find them in rummage sales. I hit the jackpot at some point when I bought a pile of remanents from a wedding seamstress.
Painting lace is easy. I use acrylic paints from Walmart or Joann’s and mix them with fabric media (available at Amazon) to make the hand of the fabric better. Mix in a little extra water until the paint is the consistency of cream, and paint the lace with sponge brushes. It’s a lovely, messy wildly colored afternoon. You let it dry completely and iron it on a synthetic heat setting.
I’ve heard a lot of people argue for the real thing. Silk organza. Real lace. I love those things too, but it’s not about fiber content. It’s about color, transparency, translucency, and texture. And it’s about whether they work well under the needle and as applique. It helps to know the content so you don’t burn it under the iron.
There’s a short story by Henry James called The Real Thing. It’s about an artist who has a noble couple offer themselves as models. They argue that they are the real thing and that they will add accuracy to his work as his models. But the truth is, he finds the woman who is his ordinary model from a humble and somewhat criminal life could be anything: a gypsy, a fairy, a queen, a courtesan, or a saint. And since she can be anything, she makes his artwork ultimately real.
Painted lace is a test tube baby, made of nylon and polyester. But it creates a wonderful surface overlay. And I really don’t care how real it is.
So, if you know of anyone who is rehoming white poly lace and organza, let me know. I finally used up my stash.
I’ve never gotten over sheers. As I child, I couldn’t imagine how I could ever wear them. outside They required a life I couldn’t imagine. Or really want. Someone who sat politely in a clean room and was polite to incredibly stuffy people, who made a life of being “beautiful”. It never appealed. But organza! And sparkle fabric! And shot sheers? I was mesmerized.
When I started working at Vogue Fabric in Evanston, I was a quilter and a cotton girl. It was some while before I thought about what would polyester sheers look like on a quilt. But they were pretty. I think I saw Ann Fahl use some tulle on a quilt as shadows. It was eye-opening.
Then I got to thinking about the things that really were see-through. Mist, water, air, clouds, and of course, flowers. Yes you can applique sheers. They’re perfect for direct applique with fusibles.
I’ve been making flowers with sheers for a while. The technique is fused sheers on felt with a lot of free-motion zigzag stitching. It’s not hard. It is time consuming, but you have all the colors of thread for your crayolas. And it’s pretty.
The Sandwich
The surface you stitch on is the sandwich. For this technique I use a layer of Stitch-and -Tear, a layer of felt, and sheers and lace backed with Steam-a-Seam 2, I used to put in a layer of hand dyed fabric either to match the sheer or the background, but I’ve found it unnecessary if I’ve chosen my felt well. The color of the felt will naturally show through. That tends to accentuate the color of the flowers.
Working on a separate sandwich means I don’t have to worry about distortion.
Zigzag stitching always pulls up and distorts the piece. No matter how much it bumples up, I can cut the distortion away at the edge of my stitching and it will be flat enough.
The stitching on them is free motion zigzag gone wild. And the shading is made to make each petal individual and each flower its own star. The color of the flower is largely defined by the sheer and the felt behind it. But the shading of the petals is all threadwork.
For more information about making flowers from sheers, see
Like most little girls, I had a pink bedroom. Unlike most other girls, mine was seafood bisque pink with brown. Needless to say, I’m hesitant about using pink. I certainly don’t wear it..
But in spite of my feelings about pink, I know better than to dismiss a color from the color wheel. They’re all in relationship with each other. It’s like putting up with weird Uncle Fred because you really like his wife Ethel. They are deeply connected and you get the one when you choose the other.
And some things are just unabashedly pink. Like roseated spoonbills. So here we are.
She’s a nesting bird, and I loved her pink and brownish background. You can push past your color preferences when you try,
These flowers were mostly white sheers and lace, stitched over in pinks, cream, and whites. The white glowa behind and the thread gives a pink blush. To my mind, they register as white flowers but the shadows echo the burgundy background. It’s a delicate look.
I haven’t done lady slippers for a while. And I wanted a white creeping vine around the outside. But you can’t make something just white. It has no dimension. So this time I used white sheers to form the flowers, but I pulled in other colors to shade them. Because the background is fuchsia, I went for soft pink shading for the white flowers. For the lady slippers, I went into brighter pinks and burgundies, with the white shining through just a bit.
Now, what makes the color of a flower? Or any other thread work? Is it the thread? Or are there other factors.
No matter how much you stitch over something you always see the background. Always. Usually I am for a background color that accentuates the threadwork.
What happens if it doesn’t blend or match? It glows from beneath. I’ve started with iridescent white organza to create an inner glow for the lady slippers.
I stitched from both sides, leaving just a bit of plain iridescent organza in the center to round out the flower. The iridescent background creates an inner glow and a subtle pink.
Here I chose pink sheers and stitched over them with various pink/apricot threads. The effect is vibrant and full of color.
The background I stitch over is as much a part of the color as the threadwork. The differences are subtle but very cool. The combination of light and color creates dimensional blooms that glow.
Sheers and metallic lace make the water for this fish
I have several kinds of fabric stashes. There is a small but excellent stash of hand dyed cotton and cheesecloth, and the stabilizers I use. They need to be kept separate because I’d never find anything again if they were not. But there is a sparkle stash, the living falling wall of sheers. And then there is the fabric with no name. I don’t know what you call it. It’s out of the drunken prom queen collection. Sheers with velour. Twinkle organza, sparkle tulle, printed lame. It was originally fabrics samples for fancy dresses.
Much of it came from the Textile Fabric Outlet, which still is at 2121 21st Street in Chicago. But I’ve bought pieces anywhere I found them in my travels. I hope and pray I have a lifetime supply. I haven’t been there in a long time, but they assure me they still sell samples and remnants.
The fabric gets put into different drawers, according to it’s purpose. I have a collection of plastic drawers where I keep fabric and thread. They’re plastic, light weight and cheap. No one ever said they were decorative or stable. But they hold quite a lot of clutter. They pop together like pop bead necklaces. They also unpop from time to time.
That’s when the drawers explode.
Last week one of the stack of two fell of it’s own accord where I usually sit in the cutting room. Thankfully I was not there. Drawers everywhere. Fabric everywhere. And of course since I get lazy and don’t exactly put things away, it all looks like crumply, rumply wads of indescribable stuff that is hopefully fabric. Who knows?
That, and my machine being still out to be fixed led to at least three days of intensive ironing and sorting. Yes, I know, iron is a four letter word. But this time it really helped me out.
Anthony Jones, a fellow quilter who’s taught at many conferences with me once pointed out the difference between pressing and ironing. Anthony started as a tailor and has gone onto quilting. But his early training was in couture. He told me that ironing is the flattening of fabric. It’s a sliding movement across the fabric. Pressing is ironing in one place to persuade a seam to be on one side or another. Pressing leaves the fabric in one place. Ironing moves the fabric, and sometimes your seam as well. There is a difference.
Well, in this case it took ironing. It turned out I could iron 3 drawers in one day. That sounded like process until I counted up to around 40 drawers. I think I have my non-creative fabric project for low energy days for a long time.
One other word about ironing, it’s all in the fabric content. Anything that is a test tube baby,(nylon, rayon, and polyester) can and will melt. I’ve done it once in demo. It was quite dramatic. For regular cotton ironing I use a Black and Decker Classic iron, a recreation of the 1950s black irons. They use very high heat and generate a lot of steam. For the test tube babies, one of the modern irons that are made for polyester clothes is safer. I no longer use expensive irons. These fit my needs just fine.
I found fabric I’d long forgot. I have small sample bridal and dressy fabric samples that make the best dragonfly wings and bug bodies. And wonderful lace and organzas that make landscapes and sky washes. There were wonders I hadn’t seen in years.
And being someone who never really cleans, folds or puts away except when drawers fall out, I had no idea how much less space it takes up to store folded iron fabric instead of stuffing it in a drawer. Who knew?
My machine is home, 6 drawers are ironed and we will resume the channel to chaotic embroidery until the next disaster occurs.
