Tools revealed

Yesterday everyone was revealing their "Tools" challenge over at the Tangled Textiles.  Here's mine.

It took me a while to figure out what exactly I wanted to do, but two folks in a coffee shop were the trigger for my idea.  Two tools used for silent conversation are your hands and eyes.

This piece was quite out of my regular style of quilt.  I used Lutradur, pigma pens, and thread sketching, a technique that I never used before, but thought I would try.  I found pictures of the hand signs on the web and printed them to Lutradur.  The first attempt was too grainy...

and did not give enough detail.  The Lutradur was also a lighter weight (70ml).  Plus it left behind too much ink on the carrier sheet.  Here you can see the residue.

I had read that if you apply a gel medium this would improve the print.  I went to the local artist shop and purchased a sample of products.  Digital Ground by Golden was supposed to work, so I tried it.  I painted the 70ml Lutrador and tried again.  You can see a definite difference.  The treated Lutradur is on the left, the untreated on the right.

This came out better, but still needed detail.  I purchased a heavier weight of Lutradur (100 ml) and tried again.  This one came out the best of all but I still wanted to emphasize the detail a bit more.

 Pigma pens with a brush tip helped provide that little bit of extra detail.  Here is a close up of one of the hands.

Now I just had to stitch them to the background.  I used black thread and arranged them so that they might appear to be in a flurry somewhat like what happens during a conversation.  Of course you need to be able to see the hands during a converstation, so I added the thread sketched eyes.  I connected all the items with stitching to portray the conversation.

Well there you have it!  It was quite a challenge!  Now I think I will go and have a conversation with my other tools.  Till the next time, pieceful sewing...