Furtherance to the previous blog about the 36” wide Red Dot not being manufactured anymore; I’ve received numerous phone calls, emails and comments on FB about alternate ideas on how to draw off patterns. Some were quite innovative but any would demand a drastic change in the way we do things at the studio. Light tables would be my first choice but then we’d have to create all our patterns on some sort of see through material, preferably vinyl and then where to source that and what sizes I can get. The heavy art paper I use wouldn’t allow the light to show through enough to see the design through the linen with clarity. We’d have hundreds of designs to do over as the red dots wear out; we’d need a year of Sundays to convert them. For future designs we could start putting smaller ones on vinyl and use our existing light table, saving the red dot for the big ones. Red Dot can be pinned to the backing nicely so the linen doesn’t shift around which it tends to do, and with red dot you can stretch out the linen corners so they are square as it tends to curl along the edge. Once you stretch the linen and pin it to the red dot it stays. Taping linen to the glass would be tricky as it is slippery as heck to work with and tape wouldn’t stick well. Duct tape would hold it but then leave residue on the linen and my customers would love that! Not!
Converting all the designs we have now would be labour intensive and then storage would be a problem with all the patterns rolled up so they don’t have creases where it would wear and crack over time. We’d need an entire room dedicated to patterns! I like tucking them in the filing cabinets, nice and neat.
The surface for transferring has to be flat or it would be harder to work on with a marker. I suppose we could tape it all down to the glass first but tape can leave residue that would need cleaning off. I hate tape, it’s one of the banes of my existence, it sticks to stuff. I’m not trying to be funny because that’s what its designed to do, but it’s indiscriminate and leaves behind a film places you don’t want it too and that can be a bitch to remove. I could do an entire rant on tape, especially the cheaper stuff you buy at Staples because it’s horrid to work with. It comes off the roll easily but is flimsy and moves in the slightest breeze, sticking on itself like hugs at a family reunion and good luck tearing it apart. Then you have to use twice at much on parcels because it doesn’t grab well, you have to rub it several times to keep it to stay in place. We now only buy expensive tape from the post office, they understand shipping and quality products, producing one that is heavier, sticks well and ranks low on the cursing.
Anyway, I wanted to say that I appreciate all your comments and thanks for taking the time to respond. I think perhaps our future might encompass a large light table and I am more than happy to undertake that down the road as the last resort, but in the meantime I’ve broke the bank buying up as much of the red dot as I can afford. Damnit! I don’t like change so I am fighting it, throwing punches with my VISA. I just ordered two more bolts from Fabricville at loan shark pricing, but that will do a lot of patterns so I don’t have to worry about running out anytime soon. Really, I only delaying the inevitable and with my luck they'll start producing it again and I'll have wasted my money buying it at retail pricing.
I hope to do a lot of designing this fall so I'll try not to begrudge it....
Converting all the designs we have now would be labour intensive and then storage would be a problem with all the patterns rolled up so they don’t have creases where it would wear and crack over time. We’d need an entire room dedicated to patterns! I like tucking them in the filing cabinets, nice and neat.
The surface for transferring has to be flat or it would be harder to work on with a marker. I suppose we could tape it all down to the glass first but tape can leave residue that would need cleaning off. I hate tape, it’s one of the banes of my existence, it sticks to stuff. I’m not trying to be funny because that’s what its designed to do, but it’s indiscriminate and leaves behind a film places you don’t want it too and that can be a bitch to remove. I could do an entire rant on tape, especially the cheaper stuff you buy at Staples because it’s horrid to work with. It comes off the roll easily but is flimsy and moves in the slightest breeze, sticking on itself like hugs at a family reunion and good luck tearing it apart. Then you have to use twice at much on parcels because it doesn’t grab well, you have to rub it several times to keep it to stay in place. We now only buy expensive tape from the post office, they understand shipping and quality products, producing one that is heavier, sticks well and ranks low on the cursing.
Anyway, I wanted to say that I appreciate all your comments and thanks for taking the time to respond. I think perhaps our future might encompass a large light table and I am more than happy to undertake that down the road as the last resort, but in the meantime I’ve broke the bank buying up as much of the red dot as I can afford. Damnit! I don’t like change so I am fighting it, throwing punches with my VISA. I just ordered two more bolts from Fabricville at loan shark pricing, but that will do a lot of patterns so I don’t have to worry about running out anytime soon. Really, I only delaying the inevitable and with my luck they'll start producing it again and I'll have wasted my money buying it at retail pricing.
I hope to do a lot of designing this fall so I'll try not to begrudge it....
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