Lutradur

 

Lutradur

I needed a moon, a harvest moon  for a wall quilt I’m working on.  Lutradur is the perfect base for a moon.  It is a light, airy and translucent, 100% nonwoven polyester that has neat thermal properties. It stitches by hand or machine beautifully, is great to bead on, but is a little on the stiff side. So it’s probably not good for quilts that will be used.  But it is perfect for art and wall quilts.

Lesley Riley wrote a great book  ”Fabulous Fabric Art with Lutradur” on all kinds of cool things to do with this stuff.

Anyway, back to the moon.  I decided to make mine with Lutradur and Angelina. So I thought I’d share a little tutorial with you on making “moon” fabric. You can ‘click’ on the photos to enlarge them.

First, I used the 70gram weight white Lutradur

I then painted it with Dye-na-Flow paint diluted 1:1 with plain water.  Since this will be a harvest moon, I chose golden yellow for the color.

After it’s dry, I make use of the thermal properties.  Now, Lutradur reacts to heat by melting and eventually will disintegrate, so keep that in mind when you’re adding heat.  But a little heat for a short time  is ideal  in this case, because Angelina fibers will bond to the Lutradur!  This will add the sheen I want to my moon. So, heat your iron (dry) to slightly cooler than the cotton setting.  Hotter than that will burn the Angelina and melt the Lutradur.

Place a piece of parchment paper larger than the Lutradur on your ironing surface and lay the painted and dry Lutradur on top. Get the desired colors of heat bond-able Angelina fibers together. I’m using lemon, and crystallina.

Spread a thin layer of fibers on top of the lutradur, mixing the colors as desired.

Cover with another piece of parchment paper and iron until the Angelina fibers bond to the Lutradur.  Check frequently, and be careful not to heat too long or at too high a temperature.  If you do,  you’ll burn the Angelina… it’ll lose it’s sheen and turn brown, and you’ll melt the Lutradur.

A few seconds and viola! A new shiny piece of fabric!

All that’s left to do now is cut out my moon and sew it to the background fabric.  And here’s a peek of where it will go.

I think that will make a fine moon!  And now you can experiment with some Lutradur too!

Angelina Fibers came from Embellishment Village

Lutradur came from Joggles

Dye-na-Flow paints came from Dharma

Give it a try. It’s fun, quick and easy!