On Dec 12, 2009, at 5:23 AM, landofoz wrote:
What I'm not *getting* is why it has to be stiffened at all. If it's an applique it's decorative and has no structural function, and not having a third layer of anything would make it easier to sew pearls on, wouldn't it?
It's often difficult to get an appliqué to lie flat and smooth while you're trying to sew it down. The tension on the cloth must be absolutely even, otherwise you end up with wrinkles or ripples. This is especially true for any material that's slippery, such as silk, and that goes double if the fabric is thin or limp and slithery. Stiffening, pasting, or backing the fabric used for the appliqué pretty much eliminates the problem. (Pins don't work nearly as well -- at least for me -- because they create bumpy areas.)
Quilt-makers doing piecework sometimes use basted-on or temporarily- glued-on papers to stabilize the edges of odd-shaped patches: for instance, the hexagons of a Grandmother's Flower Garden pattern are often done this way, especially in 19th-century pieces where the bits of cloth are difficult-to-handle fabrics such as velvets and silks. I would not be in the least surprised to discover more evidence that paper or parchment stabilizers may have been used for pieced work or appliqué in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as well. (We already know that parchment was used to stabilize the back of fabric when it was going to have heavy beading or metal thread on the front.)
You can find quite a lot of little tricks to solve this problem in modern quilt-making literature, all of which are aimed at making sure that the edges of the appliqué are firmly turned under along a smooth line and that the fabric lies flat. Synthetic iron-on interfacing is often used, despite the fact that it does make the appliqué significantly harder to stitch through. (I helped hand-quilt a quilt where this was done, and it was a pain in the wrist.) Dissolve-away stabilizers, or simply starching the pieces also work -- but in my experience, not as well. Ironing the appliqué pieces onto freezer paper (which is plastic on one side) is another trick, with the advantage that if someone wants to go to the trouble later, the backing fabric under the appliqué can be slit open and the paper carefully removed.
I've had a lot of trouble making appliqué look good, and I used to be a quilter, so that while there is of course great value in doing things the period way, personally I tend to shamelessly make use of non-period techniques that I learned from other quilters or from my graphic-arts profession. (Spray-on light-tack adhesive, for instance, is exceedingly helpful for basting, and in my experience it washes out pretty well. And I've been able to test a lot of white and colored marking pens/pencils to find ones that are easy to use, make a sharp line and wash out completely. If you don't mind using modern techniques, these can save a lot of headaches.)
____________________________________________________________ O Chris Laning <[email protected]> - Davis, California + http://paternoster-row.org - http://paternosters.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
