Feeling Frustrated

Say hello to me and my new bosom buddy - the iron. I think I've spent more time with my iron today than with my man - maybe that accounts for the grumpy expression! :)

Actually I think the grumpiness is coming from my lack of success with the transfer painting process. I've spent a good few hours today (not all at once I hasten to add that would be madness of the highest order, sitting chained to the ironing board, lol) painting pages and ironing the results on to fabric and so far I have to say I am a little disappointed.

Take this example as a for instance ....... here is my painted pageI rolled the colours on with the handle of one of my paint brushes, and really liked the nice textured effect that I got on paper. Well here is the same page transferred on to fabric... the fabric is no where near as interesting.

I have to admit that I thought the problem was in the fabric I was using. My local store had no bridal (cheap) satin, so I had to buy something called liquid satin - have no idea what the difference is, only that this type was really quite expensive - still 100% synthetic though, so I thought I'd put up with the expensive and give it a go.

As I wasn't happy with the results I figured getting some other fabric might make the difference. So I made a 40 mile round trip to the next town over in search of something different. Of course sods law dictated that they didn't have any satin either but I did manage to find a bolt of what was labelled as Habotai Silk but listed as 100% Polyester (I'm beginning to realise that although I love to work with fabric I know very little about it, I thought silk was a natural not a synthetic product?!! I don't know maybe someone with some real fabric knowledge can help me out??!!). Anyhow this fabric had a nice sheen and was cheap so I bought some home to try out.The colours are definitely coming out a lot brighter on this fabric. But I'm still having lots of problems, I can't seem to manage to get an even transfer, the colours are all blotchy. I've tried different iron temperatures and a few other synthetic fabrics that I had in my stash but I'm not really happy with any of the results.

None the less I'm trying to stay positive. I'm recording everything that I've been doing in my workbook and trying out different things. I think most of these fabrics will end up getting used in later chapters for stitching samples so I'm figuring that it's not essential to have something that I think is perfect, but it would be nice to have a few pieces that I'm actually happy with and will look forward to working on. It's just very frustrating to go through the process - which is quite time consuming - painting the page, waiting for it to dry and then ironing it, which takes a good while to get the transfer to work - only to end up with nothing that I'm really happy with. Sigh!

I guess it's all part of the learning process but I'm starting to feel a little panicky as I still have a long way to go with all of this, the costs of all these experiments are mounting up and I'm already falling behind in the little study timetable that I had mapped out in my head. Maybe I need to take a day off, take a step back and breathe :) Anyone want to volunteer to come over and give me a sharp slap round the face and tell me to snap out of it?!?? ;-)