After the success of the stitched letter and several suggestions that I try bringing the stitching right up to the edges I decided to try it again on an embroidery hoop (the piece has now been taken out of the hoop) because the frame of my canvas meant that I couldn’t take the stitching right up to the edge on the canvas.
I found the calico was too thin and although I tightened the hoop as tight as it would go, the fabric kept coming loose as I was stitching and this made it difficult to keep the lines of stitching straight so I gave up on this idea and decided to try using masking fluid and ink to make the morse code.
I blocked out the morse code with the masking fluid which I then covered with brusho ink when it was dried. After the brusho ink dried, I carefully peeled all of the masking fluid off the calico. Because the brusho ink is powder, I don’t have much control over where it goes and how it sits so the patterns of the ink meant that areas of morse weren’t dyed and so letters and words are missing which fits in perfectly with the idea of code and hidden messages because the whole message is no longer there.
Because this had worked so well, I decided to try again using masking fluid to block out braille while I splattered the calico with ink. This time the ink bled underneath the masking fluid on most of the circles but luckily they are still visible.
This second experiment is almost (unintentionally) a bit of a sick joke because it’s flat braille. there’s nothing there to feel this time.