more wet wool....

These wool-color-transfer images just won't stay tablet-size. They're demanding to be done on clothing segments.

Last week, I was boiling my woolen squares in large flat pans. Now I’m using sections of a deconstructed tan wool jacket. With these bigger pieces, I need to roll the fabric up to fit in the pans. In the past, I’ve boiled the cloth rolls in a big pot of water, but the color transfer tends to be less accurate than flat boiling. By rolling wet cloth around a tube and wrapping it in foil, I get crisper images.

On top is a just-boiled woolen sleeve. The freezer paper hand outline is still on it, along with some lacey stuff. On the bottom, the finished, dry sleeve with the shadow of the lace and hand. My black stitches left their ghosts, too.

Moving past the flat-hand images, my husband took some photos of my hands in various sewing positions.  I made them into paper outlines and experimented with placing them on the cloth.

Above center: 2 finished sleeves. On each side: front jacket sections with paper hands ironed on

OK, rolled in foil and boiled; unrolled, with lace and hands showing; the finished, dry jacket section. Here's the next one:

This one is perfect! The lace patterns are sharp, the hands read clearly (I poked tiny holes in the upper paper hand outline to allow some color to go through and create lines). I saw the Black Panther movie this week, and as they were introducing the movie, they had one title in dark letters with much lighter edges. I wanted to try that, so on this one I ironed strips of freezer paper around the edges. Two detail photos:

So now I had 2 sleeves and 2 front sections with great images. I pinned them together and got...

...something that does not work. At all.

Maybe I should add some dark scissor shapes? no......

How about a thick edging? no.

Well, it certainly needs a dark background (like this one that I photoshopped in). I can use the pieces of the dark blue coat that I used to get the blue color. The Neanderthal women used earth pigments on stone to create their markings. Here, only a coat and a jacket are manipulated to create the images. Textile art composed of only the 2 used garments. So...this certainly has integrity of materials, but ......am I using techniques instrinsic to the media, or am I just having great fun playing with cloth?

When I wasn't pinning the jacket sections into different compositions, with a variety of backgrounds, I was also running more experiments. I tried discharging round metal bobbin images into the wool. Not a success. By the time I had any sort of images, I had almost burned through the wool.

What about rusting? On cotton and linen, rusty tools can create sharp, clear images. it would be great to have rusty images of scissors, and needles (the ghost hands in blue and white could hold a rusty needle image!)

But on wool, the rust just looked dirty. Maybe it just needs more time (probably not going to work, but I would love to have rusty tool images with those ghostly hands!).

So, back to the basement, place the rusty stuff back on the wool, paint with vinegar and water, cover ....

...and weigh it down. Now I'm going to leave it for 2 full days (overnight is usually enough).

2 days later....

Well, it's a lot better than it had been. Might work. I also tried a rusty scissor on some thicker white wool:

Here's what I'm thinking: rather than trying to assemble jacket sections into a mish-mash composition, how about starting with just one coat section....

Use the paper hands and lace resist with dark blue wool coloring, and rusty scissor images on the bottom...? And use the dark wool as background. But just one, strong piece with all the resist carefully applied.  I think that's the best option. But it won't work with THIS coat ...

This is the same coat used for that very first hand print. The print wasn't clear. I tried experimenting... 

And I could achieve a sharper hand outline, but the lace resist was just clumpy and funny-looking (although I'm loving the back-thread-transfer. Some of the Neanderthal paintings are described as 'ladders' and I can see how black stitches can work as great ladder images).  

So now I have to go find a white wool coat or jacket made of finer, thinner wool. Out to the thrift stores!

Once again, this will be a one-post week. Nothing more coming on Wednesday or Friday. Hope nobody's disappointed (wonder if anyone notices?) but that's all, folks! I have tablets calling to be stitched ("ME! No, me first!") and others ready to be printed and painted. Just as soon as I figure out these woolen hands. Really, I just need a few more lifetimes and I can DO this.....