Lettering and Textiles – David Jones workshop

The first completed piece from the workshop! Well done Bec. This is what she said:
“I thought you might like to see what I did with my finished piece. I was going to mount it on coloured card, but then thought, no, I’m a quilter – I’ll put it on a quilt 🙂 So I did, using some of my hand dyed fabrics. And now it lives in our toilet :-)”

The David Jones workshop was on Friday and by Monday Bec had made something of her piece! It’s great and I think that mixing paper and fabric really works well because the paper has a surface, substance and patina. This is because it was first painted in acrylic and then gessoed. If it had merely been paper, I don’t think she’d have pulled it off, even with the lovely lettering.

We talked about how people could use this style of lettering in their quilting.

• Applique is not really suited to such slender letters – it would not really be ‘truth to material’
• Stitch the paper to a fabric mount – like Bec did.
• Paint black letters on plain white gesso and make up a photo screen to screen print the fabric. This can then be done with blended colours. The resulting fabric can be cut up and used in a quilt.
• Screen print letters in a low contrasting colour to the fabric and overprint them using the lettering sideways, upside down and overlapping in a second colour.
• Paint the letters directly onto the fabric using acrylic (no one washes artworks – come on…) or with Deka fabric paint to keep ‘the hand of the fabric’
• Stitch the outlines of the letters. This is done as ‘free stitching’ without a foot on the machine – check Youtube! (or go to a workshop at In Stitches – Yately)

Here is a way to create lettering from your design so that you can stitch continuously:

• Lay tracing paper off and trace part of the letter – enough to be able to see what it is, then be sure to end the letter at a point where it can join effortlessly onto the next letter.
• Move the tracing paper slightly closer to to the next letter if necessary and continue.
• Make some rules to create a dynamic lively text and for consistency. Mine are:
• Try to preserve double outlines.
• Never go back over a line, but rather do an extra line to the side of it or cross over (see the O)
• Take the time to draw your letters carefully before you begin tracing over them.