“HOW AM I GOING TO DO THIS?”

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This action is a continuation from my last one. I was wondering how to get the typeface I made on to the handkerchief so I could follow the outline for stitching. I asked Maleeka for advice as she has printed on fabric before and she uses a digital fabric printer which I do not have access to. A lot of the week went into figuring this situation out with the tools I had. How am I going to do this???

After asking my dad if it’s possible to print on fabric on an inkjet printer (bad, bad idea), it occurred to me that there is a way to transfer the artwork to the fabric without directly printing on it. Heat transfer paper. Just iron it on. Had to knock myself on the head for this. It seems like such a “oh, duh” solution.

Got my heat transfer paper. Printed on it (pictured above). Ironed it on to my fabric and then started embroidering. That’s when I realized that the characters were printed to small. Oof. I knew when I created the typeface, each character either was going to be four stitches long and two stitches wide or 2 stitches long and 2 stitches wide but I did not take into account how long each stitch would be. But then everything was already on the fabric so I decided to go ahead with it.

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Embroidery is truly a practice of patience. I’ve stabbed myself multiple times, screamed (internally) when I didn’t do the stitch quite right and required time and intense concentration. In the end, I made it. The embroidered typeface (pictured above) is a little different from what I imagined. It’s a little wonky. A little less perfect than imagined but that’s okay. Imperfection is its own aesthetic and I am an amateur at embroidery and I also didn’t give myself enough time. Though I really liked the “2”, it’s a nice “2”.

What next? I wanted to name the typeface but I also wanted it to be a usable typeface before I name it. As I stated in my last action, this typeface was created to be used to tell the story of my great grandparents by those close to them. I decided to actually create the embroidered typeface digitally in the break. I don’t know if you could use images to make a typeface. I still want the texture of the stitch to be retained. I asked my friend who’s made a font before if that’s possible and even she’s not sure. I’ll figure it out.