Solvi, light boxes and using metho with a photocopier to reverse an image.

Transferring designs
 
I don’t know if this will help but the local material shop had this wonderful plastic stuff for transferring designs to difficult fabrics.  It was fairly thin, clear, and a bit thicker than glad wrap.  You used a ball point pen to trace the design, and then just tacked the plastic to the blanket.  The embroidery is done through both the plastic and the wool.  When the embroidery is finished, the plastic washes away with a few drops of water.  I have no idea what effect the process has from a conservation point of view, but for a blanket which will be used this is probably not too important.  You have to be careful with the plastic stuff though, if you spill your tea, it washes away

A.  It’s called ‘Solvi’ because it dissolves, and there is another one as well.  I didn’t even think of using that.  Don’t use it in high summer either; the sweat off your hands will do it.  But then, you won’t be doing wool emb in summer.

Can’t you con Max into making you one about the size of an A4 sheet – you just need a wooden box made with a groove around the top edge to take a sheet of glass – frosted glass is better – a glazier should be able to cut you a piece to size.   And a light globe rigged up  inside.  We have one like this at our craft group, one of the husbands made it up years ago, and it works like a charm.

My DH made a light box using an old drawer as the frame. I think he picked up the drawer from a council clean-up. He just replaced the drawer bottom with a sheet of glass and fitted a light globe as described by Noelene. It has a handle and has come in handy for all sorts of craft. DD2 has been using it to make bit & pieces for the folio that goes with her HSC textiles major work.

The pricking design in the book is a mirror image of the working diagram!  Is there an *easy* way to fix this please?  Do photocopiers have a function to reverse the image?.

If you paint the back of the photo copy with metho, while still damp photocopy wrong side down & you will get the reverse of the original. Because the metho is a little oily the paper becomes opaque. I actually meant freshly painted with metho. The paper certainly DOES’NT stick to the copier. I’ve used this method to get pictures that face each other countless number of times.