more on the Flag Letters

As I mentioned yesterday, I printed the flags onto prepared fabric sheets. I used Jacquard cotton sheets.

I have printed on fabric I have prepared before, but my last printer had Durabrite inks, so the fabric didn't need special treatment. I decided this time I didn't have time to phaff about trying to do my own sheets.

I made a few sketches of barbed wire letters to try to get a feel for how to do them with the machine.

I hadn't been able to find a barbed wire font that looked like this, but I found a link about how to draw barbed wire for tattoos. Quite easy really! Draw a bit of a wobbly line and then draw another wobbly line over it. Then draw in little wrapped wire barbs with the ends poking out!

Then I tried it out on that sample fabric sheet I had done when I still thought it was 7 inches square. I found with the machine it was easier to do a straightish line for the letter first, then go along with the wobbly wire, stopping here and there to 'draw' the barbs.
I also tried using sew-in interfacing as stabiliser, but the fabric is pretty closely woven and it wasn't really working. Then I remembered that Sulky had given me quite alot of stabiliser to try when I did the Bernina Garments. I found that the Sulky Sticky + worked really well.

I think I am going to leave the stabiliser in - it gives just enough firmness to the cloth to allow it to be a flag, but not be droopy.

After I stitched the letters, I trimmed them to size.

I am storing them in this lovely box my friend gave me one time.

When they are complete, I will back them with another fabric and string them along somehow to make a wee string of bunting. We have a display area with information from Open Doors and some of the other organisations working to support people mistreated for their beliefs.

Something I learned when developing the flag images on the computer. The flags, of course, are usually rectangular. I created a 7 cm sqare text box in Word for each flag and then chose fill and selected the jpg or gif of the flag. They become slightly distorted when fitted into a square. Although different countries have different specifications for the ratios of height to width. They are often shown at a 2:3 ratio when shown together. I may do this again using those ratios for a larger bunting to string across one of the walls of the church. I chose stencil font to write the name of the country on the flag.

I also printed the letter which corresponded to the position of the country on the World Watch List. Then I don't get them mixed up when they get to the sewing machine!