For the longest time (since my early years in college), I’ve been itching to do a mixed media project of my mother & grandmother. Finally a week before this past mother’s day, I decided to tackle this project for my mom!
Lately, I’ve been sewing a lot of flower girl dresses and projects for others, so I was excited to set aside everything for this personal project! I knew I wanted to print an old photo of my babcha on linen and hand embroider details of a Ukrainian shirt, but other than that I didn’t have much of a plan, and decided to wing it as I went along.
Unfortunately, my printer would not take my linen, (I freaked a little because I was afraid I broke the printer). As an alternative, I printed on muslin and a water-soluble interfacing. I chose to work with the interfacing because the interfaced muslin print was a bit blurry.
I basted the interfacing to the linen. And since I opted for the interfacing, I had to stitch all the details (not just the shirt). I first machine-stitched the facial and shirt details using my domestic sewing machines. I did this by disengaging the feed dog and manually guided my material through the machine.
I wasn’t entirely satisfied. But since it took quite a bit of time and patience to stitch the photograph, I decided to continue on with what I had.
Next, I hand-embroidered the details of the Ukrainian shirt with colorful floss. It was very difficult to push the hand needle through the interfaced linen and water-soluble interfacing. Unfortunately this took much more time than I had anticipated.
But once the hand-embroidery was finished, I was satisfied and happy with it.
The last and final step should’ve been dissolving the interfacing and framing the piece. But when I tried to dissolve the interfacing, it did not dissolve!
I tried everything to dissolve the paper from the stitches-chemicals, a couple of laundry washes, and pretty much everything except Drano. But unfortunately, nothing worked!
I wasn’t willing to quit this project after spending so much time on it, so I decided to use my fabric dyes to dye the cloth and interfacing. The dye looked fine, but when I started to set the dye with the iron, the dye bled. Needless to say I was not very happy.
I had 24 hrs to finish the project. I could either start over, or buy fabric paint to paint over the skin where the dye bled. I decided to spoil the surprise and leave the decision up to my mom, who advised me to paint.
By the time I finished cutting out the piece and painting the skin, the piece no longer resembled my babcha.
Because of this, I finally decided to pitch the mixed media piece!
I might try this again when I have free time! Hopefully the second attempt is a success!
Oh no! To lose a project after so much work — and something so sentimental as well, that’s tough. I do hope you try it again!
I know it was! But the second one might be 10 times better 🙂