Customer Reviews

Transparency in Textiles

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are a beginner in textile art then this would be a great book to have in your library. It's an attractive glossy book, the instructions are very clear, and it covers a lot of techniques. However I was personally disappointed in the book for several reasons.

Firstly I found that most of the information I already had in other books e.g. "Surfaces for Stitch: Plastics, Films & Fabric", "Layers of Stitch: Contemporary Machine Embroidery", "On the Surface: Thread Embellishment & Fabric Manipulation", and "Complex Cloth: A Comprehensive Guide to Surface Design", and any embroidery technique book.

Secondly, it took a broader view of the term "transparency" than I would have, and many of the pieces are quite opaque.

Thirdly, I thought a lot of the examples of the textile art were downright ugly, although I know this is a very personal and subjective judgment.

Finally, I think a better title would have been "Transparency in Textile Art". Some techniques would be transferable to textiles for clothing, but most would not, unless you're making something in the wearable art category.

The full list of techniques in the book are:

running stitch on sheer fabric, sheer fabrics layered with stitch
traditional shadow embroidery, and seed stitching, on sheer and net
layering sheers with bondaweb
random pleating, gathering and folding on sheers, held in place with free hand machine embroidery
Brushing wax on fabrics, and using wax as a resist for dyeing (both fabric and glassine/translucent/plain paper)
Mono-printing onto tissue, layering between organdie, applying wax and iron, then over-stitching
Oiling paper and over-stitching
Embroidering onto soluble/burnable fabric e.g. Lutrador, Solvy, then dissolving/burning away fabric
Weaving open-weave fabrics using embroidery threads on a simple card frame
Making silk paper
Wool felting (thin layers of colored wool allow underlayers to show through, or leave holes to make a lacy effect)
Stitching on sheers in lots of different threads, to achieve layers of varying translucency
Stitching, painting and printing on acetate sheets (OHP Sheets), cellophane, PVC, old photographic film, and clear film
Hand sewing together sheets of hard acrylic sheeting (drill holes first)
Drawing, burning, painting, bending hard acrylic sheeting
Heat laminating textiles between hard acrylic sheeting
Using acrylic painting gel mediums on textiles
Pouring polymer resins on textiles
Casting resin shapes encapsulating textiles
Fibre optic fabrics (A single, incredibly general, page. How I WISH this had been more covered in more detail than to say "you can readily purchase the necessary equipment to add these lights to your work". I would love to - what equipment do I need? Tell me how, please?)
Using natural and artificial lighting to show off the transparency
Incorporating wire-wrapped semi-precious stones
Incorporating metal shims

There's also a chapter on getting inspiration and developing designs, and another on presenting your work

An important note about wax. The author suggests brushing wax onto your fabric, letting it cool, then over-stitching on the machine. If you use paraffin wax and then put the fabric in your sewing machine, the wax will flake off in small pieces, drop through your feed dogs and cause mayhem. You'd want to use a micro-crystalline wax which is more flexible.

If you like the sound of these techniques, and you don't already have information on them. then you will love this book.

I was really excited when I first saw this title because I have been working with transparency in textiles myself. I was hoping that this book might help me along the path. I also think that Batsford is a great publisher. This book does offer some very interesting techniques; using wax, stitching to distort, resin - many techniques that result in transparency - but transparency with rigidity. It's a good book really and I am certain that for many this will be a 4 or 5 star! It just was not quite what I personally had been hoping for.

This book by batsford offers something different. It explains how you can incorporate and use the aspect of transparency into your own work, without being a step by step guide making it a very useful addition to my library. I love the new techniques working with hard plastics, the burning and bending bit in particular. And the consideration of using light and the shadows as part of the design is inspired.
I love it and so do all my friends. Brilliant!

Excellent photographs and explanation of the projects of the work presented in this publication. This takes, collage, layering, stitching, fusing etc., a step further. If you're not into Surface Design with mixed media you can always use this for a fabulous coffee table conversation piece.