Drinks Like a Fish

This work is based on a technique (described below) learnt from a workshop given by Yvonne Brown.

Many years a ago I made waistcoat for the tommy of the Newcastle Kingsmen, a sword dance team that I used to dance with. They were very keen on drinking real ale and the waistcoat featured computerised machine embroidered beer pump clips.

I was left with many rectangles of fabric with the proofs of embroideries that I had designed and was looking for a way to make use of them.

Construction

• This technique requires that you work from the back of the piece. It starts by tracing the pattern of the window onto the back of a piece of cotton with fine permanent mark pens. The pattern can be seen on the front of the cotton.
• The large panes where the embroideries are to go were originally placed as circles. Each embroideries in turn was carefully positioned, centered over the circle in the drawn pattern, and then machine stitched down going closely around the edge of embroidery. Excess backing fabric is trimmed away so that it does not cover any of the other panes in design.
• The smaller panes were carefully positioning fussy cut fabric with fusible interlining and ironed into place. These pieces were big than the pane but not so big that they went into neighbouring panes.
• Once all the pieces were attached, the whole thing was covered in a layer of acrylic felt and then a layer polyester fabric (both of which are sensitive to heat). The three layers are temporally pinned together to hold them in place.
• Then, working from the back, the lines of the pattern are machine sown over with a non-heat sensitive thread (cotton or rayon – not polyester). In the case of the embroideries, the positioning circles are ignored and stich lines that attached them to the backing are stitched over again.
• Then, working from the front, what you see is a blue sheet with the pattern stitched in – a bit like a wholecloth quilt.
• The cloth and felt covering the window panes in the design is cutaway by tracing around the inside of the stitching.
• The excess acrylic felt around the outside of the outer circle is trimmed away, right upto the stitch line. The top polyester sheeting is trimmed about 1” outside the stitch line.
• A circular piece of fabric is placed at the back. The front is folded around and hemmed to the back and the layers are joined by adding ties in the corners of some of the panes so they are completely hidden,
• Finally a circular sleeve is added to the back (with gaps at three or four points around the circle) and a carbon fibre rod inserted and bent to follow the line of the circle. The two ends are joined by inserting them into a small piece of narrow brass tubing.