The most interesting window curtains you'll ever see

After pinning up some painted lace "coral" and staring at the results for a while, I felt it needed some brighter colors and some lighter lace dripping off the bottom edge. So I went thrift-shopping and came home with an armload of polyester lace curtains, and got out the transfer paints the girls had given me Christmas before last, and which had been sitting unused and unloved during the months of depression.

These paints are a delight to use. First you squeeze out a few drops of different colors, moosh them around on a piece of paper, and let them dry. (You can also paint very delicate, precise designs if that's what you want; in this case I just wanted a general look of glowing colors.) Any kind of paper will do; I used the back sides of a first draft, because I have a lot of first and partial drafts lying around. That was plain old cheapest-available copy paper from the office supply store, and it worked fine.



Once the paint's dry, you can start having fun. Cover your ironing surface with newsprint, lay out your polyester fabric, put the painted paper color-side down, and start ironing color onto fabric. G&S Dye, the source for these particular paints, says you can expect to get two good transfers out of every painted page, but with lace you get a lot more; I painted four pages and used only one. The stuff has no detectable hand at all, which will be useful if I ever want to drape the lace gracefully.



The whole piece is under the sewing machine right now, where I'm tacking down the pinned-on laces as a subtle hint that I'd like them to stay right where they are during the next phases.

Thrift shops have a ton of polyester lace curtains; I didn't use a third of what I bought. One piece even has sea motifs - starfish and shells and whatnot - worked into the lace. I'm saving those for the next water-themed piece, which is clear in my mind but not yet so good in Poser Figure Artist.

In progress...

I've been happily applying clumps of bamboo fiber and long water-weedy trails of dyed ribbon to "Drowned Woman." Now it's time to step back and...ok, first I need to pick out and re-sew that one piece of ribbon that has an angle in it. And then I get to pin up various bits of painted lace that look, I hope, very coral-ish, and stare at the thing, and try to decide if that's too much, and pin up the ombre sheer that's to overlay the whole piece and see how it looks. The thing is, I painted a lot of lace, and I don't think there's room for more than 3 or 4 pieces, and...oh, well. I can see another water-themed quilt in my near future; I've got to do something with all the leftovers from this piece, hand-dyed sparkly ribbon and silk ribbon and gauze and organza and painted lace.

Probably won't make a decision before we leave for the beach, where I plan to spend several days placidly bobbing up and down in salt water, alternating with hand quilting "Shrine Composition II."

Lace on a Grand Scale

I'm disappointed that they don't have a picture of the 600-pound laser-cut oil drum, but the few pics they do have are fantastic - wish I could get to Philly to see the exhibit!
Lace at the Design Center

Defining the SolvyLace border

So far we've been making ragedy-edged bits of SolvyLace that are fine for making bowls, or appliqueing to a solid fabric to make an interesting base for embroidery, or setting a lacy window insert into a dress or a quilt. But suppose you want to use the SolvyLace on its own - for a scarf, for instance? You might trim the edges with a rotary cutter and hope they stay even. You might bind the trimmed edges to make sure they stay even.

Or - and this is my preferred method - you might start making your Solvy sandwich by laying down a wide ribbon all around the outer edge, and then make sure your stitching goes into the ribbon so that it'll be well anchored to the rest of the grid.



That's how I bordered this sample, as well as the "Jewel" scarf to be seen here.

And that, I think, is quite enough variations on the Solvy sandwich; and a good time to end the series, because tomorrow and Thursday I'll be out of town.

Color Blended SolvyLace

Select a collection of fabric scraps (as usual, I prefer sheers, but it's up to you) and blend across the spectrum like this:













When I put this piece together, clearly I was thinking too much "blend" and not enough "lace."
So to get a lacy look afterwards, I heat-distressed it just like the previous piece. This almost worked, because nearly all the fabric was synthetic. I had, however, used some hand-dyed green/aqua silk to make the transition from green to blue. That's the big ugly brown spot in the lower left. And that is why it pays to think about what you're going to do next with the piece, and what type of fabrics you want to use, before you get the wrong stuff neatly stitched into the grid!