For the past few days, I’ve been working on the surface design for my Cashmerette Upton dress, the one I’ll be wearing to a friend’s wedding in a couple weeks. At first I thought I could use the technique I call “shattered lace”–which is basically printing through lace with liquid dye. I really love the effect on a silk scarf I made during my work group’s holiday crafting party a few years ago. (Yeah, we do that kind of fun thing.) I want to do more of this. It would look great on a dress!
This silk habotai scarf was printed by spraying liquid dye through scraps of lace. I call the effect it creates “shattered lace” because that’s what it looks like to me.
Just not this one. I realized that this technique probably wouldn’t take well on shantung, or at least not as well as on habotai. So I purchased some pretty stencils, a large rubber stamp, and a set of Jacquard Lumiere and Textile paints, and tested out the effects on scraps of my silk shantung. I settled on one stencil and the stamp and started by printing the dress bodice sections. If it turned out horrible, I had enough leftover fabric to cut new bodice pieces. I cut the bodice sections from the fabric, pinned them to large sheets of paper to keep them stable, covered my dining room table with a huge plastic drop cloth, and got to work!
My fabric, before cutting and printing.
Printed bodice front.
I wasn’t sure at first whether I liked the effect, but it grew on me pretty quickly. Especially as I added metallic gold and metallic purple accents to the black print to give it more dimension. The design is very random and has kind of a hodgepodge appearance because of the branches with flowers and birds and then the large scattered blossoms of a different variety that in no way relate to the branches. This is the effect I would have wanted with the lace printing technique. I like the design a little more every time I look at it.
I really like how these back sections now seem to glow. That’s the splotchy dye-job, but now it almost looks like an intentional part of the surface design.
And just yesterday I realized that even if I had used the lace printing technique, there are no metallic liquid dyes. Duh. So I would have had to use some form of hand painting or printing/stamping anyway to do the metallic accents. Sigh. What a happy accident!
Jacquard’s textile paints are great because they don’t spread willly nilly (unless you’re using DyNaFlow), and they heat set very easily with a hot iron. Once a painted design is heat-set, the fabric is washable. This dress won’t be washed often, though, as it will remain a semi-special occasion garment.
Now that the bodice sections are done, I’m starting to work on the 4 skirt sections.
The right skirt back. The left one is similar. I might have gone a tad overboard, but it’s hard to know when to say “enough.”
Another view of the right skirt back (upside down) with the two back waistbands.
Fearless Sewing 