- Being brave: Lettering with a Pitt pen

I have never been satisfied with my handwriting ... scrawl really. And so at first I tried using rubber stamps to letter my work, but the size was too fixed, the letters too regular.

Then I tried  writing in my own hand using water erasable markers, but the lines were so heavy that it wasn't much fun.

So this time I decided to use the permanent ink Pitt pen ... worried that I would make a mistake halfway through and ruin a piece of cloth ... deciding to use a scrap of rust-dyed cotton muslin that hadn't taken a strong image of Don's wonky metal thing ... I could always try again.

The point of the Pitt pen was so fine it surprised me when it didn't catch on the cloth. I lettered TRIANGULATION with such care ... holding my breath.

Then stopped and wrote out the rest of the words on paper, just to see. And it looked okay, so I wrote them on the cloth. Faster at first, until I stumbled on the "f"  in "from" at the end of the first line. Then slower.

And when I finished, I wished I had left more room at the bottom of the cloth, but I didn't and it was okay.

I basted the rust-dyed cloth onto a piece of lichen-dyed muslin and began to stitch ... one strand of floss in a short, fine needle ...

stitches so small they made my heart happy ... even the wonky "f" ...

Don asked me if I had printed the text out on the computer somehow ... he has the perfect, regular hand of an elementary school teacher who has written on blackboards for decades ... it was the best thing he could have said.

And the two layers of cloth together ... how is that that I never realized how much easier it would be to stitch through two thin layers rather than one?

                                     

Thank you Jude for this revelation. 

Addendum: Here's the link to the jeans in the background ... I've posted an update on their current condition