Wednesday, 16 May 2012

Foiling about

Yesterday the postie brought me a lovely treat – a metallic rainbow of delicious transfer foil from threadnoodle’s blog giveaway. Thank you Isobel! Those not as lucky as me can buy some from her Etsy shop.

So, I had to have a little play, didn’t I…

FoilSampler

Tasteful, eh? Not my usual style but don’t panic, it’s just an experiment.

This is an idea I had years ago, when I was given a reel of “fusible bonding yarn”. I thought, hmm, transfer foil sticks to Bondaweb, so what if? I don’t know if anyone else has tried it – probably not, you have to be a little daft, after all we have metallic thread, don’t we.  It’s not quite the same though…

My sample has all sorts of machine embroidery, built in patterns and free, using the bonding thread. Then the transfer foil has been ironed over it, trying lots of different colours. You can’t see the individual stitches any more, so it doesn’t look quite the same as stitching with metallic threads. A bit messy, the foil has somehow spread onto the fabric in places, but that might just be me being impatient.

Shiny metallics are hard to show in a photograph (for me anyway) – sorry.  But you get the idea.

The thread I’ve got is by Gold-Zack, and it’s meant for hemming I think. It’s quite thick and splits easily, so it’d be easier to use it on the machine bobbin. This Prym one looks like the current version, but there are other makes now which might be finer and easier to use.

The bonus is that the stitched patterns leave the foil full of lacy gaps so it’s ready for more subtle applications!     

1 comment:

Iz said...

Ooh! Fusible thread! I'd never heard of that - I'm going to have to get my hands on some. Thank you for having a play!