The Accidental Embroiderer

Silver leaf vs. Mylar

Cherri’s sent me some samples of Mylar (from http://www.heirloomsbysharon.com/) and I’ve finally been able to try it out. I stitched the same fish with the Mylar as I had done before with the foil, and I’m pleasantly surprised. I had expected the foil to look a lot better, but in many ways the Mylar wins. For a start, because the Mylar isn’t glued down, it looks a bit “puffy”, which gives a nice three-dimensional look to the designs. The foil does looks a bit more genuinely metallic and less plasticky, but on the other hand the Mylar is a lot easier to use, and it doesn’t shed those worrying flakes. As I suspected, both materials have their advantages and disadvantages, and it's just a question of designing to make the most of whatever material you use

 

Fish embroidered with silver leaf

 

Fish embroidered with silvered Mylar film

 

Cherri's version of the Mylar fish in different colours

The only thing I really regret about giving up the foil is having to give up the fascinating colours and patterns it comes in. However the Mylar does come in some interesting colours too. I wonder if it would be possible to paint the Mylar with some very dilute acrylic paint to give a variegated appearance? I must give it a try

Meanwhile, with those technical problems sorted out, I think I can get back to the fish panel

 

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time...

I’ve very regretfully decided not to continue with the gilded fish project. It was going very well and I’d done several nice silver and gold fish. But the problem was that after the gilding was applied to the fish, the edges of the foil began to break up into tiny metallic flakes. This didn’t affect the appearance of the fish, and at first it was just a nuisance, as I began to find little metallic flakes all over the house. But then I began to wonder if the little bits of foil might find their way into my machine, and that was a worrying thought. They were only tiny flakes, but all the same you don’t want bits of metal, no matter how small, getting caught up in the delicate mechanism of these machines

So I’ve had to call a halt to the project. However Cherri is sending me some samples of Mylar, which might be a substitute for the metallic gilt. I haven’t a clue what Mylar is, although I think it's a plastic film of some kind, and I haven’t been able to find a UK supplier. It won't be the same as gilt, so the project won’t look the same. However it may be different in a good way - we’ll just have to see

 Meanwhile, here’s the way the gilded fish developed.

 

First, the fins are stitched and the body of the fish is appliqueed onto a background fabric

 

 

Second, the foil is glued onto the body of the fish

And third, the finishing details are added

But look at all those little gold flakes round the finished stitchout. They were broken off the loose edges of the foil by the vibration of the embroidery machine. Could those maybe end up in the mechanism of the machine? I don’t want to take the chance

 

Yet another owl

Right, back to the owls for a week so so. Here’s the next one in the series. This is just a v.1 stitchout so there are still things to correct – such as the feathers on the right side of the head, which need adjustment. Also the colours aren’t quite right, which is always a problem with first versions – you never really know how colours are going to work together until you actually see them on the stitchout, and in these complex designs it’s particularly important to get the colours absolutely right. However he doesn’t need a lot of work and will soon be ready to go

 

The latest owl v. 1

It’s lucky that I have a backlog of owls to put up here, because I’ve just started on a long and demanding project involving a lot of different designs and a lot of metallic foil. It’s going to take a long time to finish and until it’s done I won’t have much new to post here. The new project is a panel made up of 21 different designs and although the designs themselves are pretty simple, the stitchouts are taking a long time to do, and the foil is proving very difficult to handle. However I’m hoping that it will get easier with time

 

The raven

OK, I’ll give owls a rest for this week. Here’s another bird, a raven, that I originally did as part of a large and complicated panel involving several different birds. Unfortunately the panel didn’t really turn out all that well. The individual birds are fine but they need a bit more thought before they work well together. Anyway here’s the first bird in the assembly, which I particularly like. Unfortunately it’s difficult to see detail in amongst all that black on the scanned image, but there is a lot of complexity which adds to the effect of the bird when you see the stitched-out version

 

The raven