Rusted On

Rust might not be everyone’s favourite colour, but I’m sure I will be making lots of lovely rust-coloured garments this summer. All Ikea’s fault, because they specialled off their rust coloured linen curtains for a ridiculous price. Was there a palace revolt of bean counters against the designers or was it just some sort of embarrassing mistake? Whatever the reason, I couldn’t help but go berserk and buy several packets. Each pair of curtains is 5m of linen, which makes …. uhm … let’s not do the maths, too embarrassing! Suffice it to say that I love the colour (which is just as well), and the price of around $8/m allows me so much more freedom to experiment than if I had to shell out the usual $25-40 in the fabric shops. So it’s a win-win, Ikea gets to get rid of stock they clearly don’t want and I get to get rid off my fear of ruining expensive fabric when trying out new ideas.

I started making inroads into my stash of many meters of red-brown linen with a tunic painted with a super simple abstract in black. I really like the colour combo even if it is not particularly spring-like. But with the long sleeves it will be just the right weight for the change of season and in any case, autumn is sure to come again. 🙂

The pattern is the Tessuti Athina, what else, this time in the longer length, meant to be worn over loose pants. The motif was painted on with a brush with screen printing ink and the signature had to be stencilled as such fine lines are hard with a brush on the rough texture of linen. Too easy to spoil the whole thing at the last moment with some gluggy blobs. I used screen printing ink because I was too impatient to wait the 8 hours or overnight you need with dye before being able to sew this up. In all my impatient enthusiasm I forgot to peel away the newspaper under the fabric while the ink was still wet, so now I have bits of newspaper permanently stuck on the inside. Serves me right, but I could always claim that it adds to that ‘artisan look’. 🙂

I modified the Athina slightly by installing slits at sides, to about high hip level. Makes more sense with something this long and allows easy access to my pant pockets.

Next in my line up of rust coloured linen garments is a calf-length tunic with short sleeves, again split at the sides to the waist.

This could be worn over pants or possibly even a skirt. I have tried this look before with a knit and long sleeves in winter, but when you need a jacket over the top to keep warm the super long tunic can look awkward. So short sleeved for summer, when jackets are not necessary, is probably a better idea.

The pattern here, surprise surprise, is not the Athina but the Georgia dress by Elizabeth Suzann Studio. More about the sewing details and modifications are on PatternReview.

The stencilled motif is an old favourite, one of the Matisse cut-outs, stencilled with freezer paper and this time I took my time with thickened dye, to preserve the soft hand of the fabric.

I had a brief flirtation with using these giraffes, but I am a bit wary of animals on my clothes.

Too cutesy? Maybe not if it is sufficiently stylised and the safari theme suits the colour. I might still try it if I find I like wearing this new silhouette of a long tunic with split sides over pants. Apparently we are in for another cool summer on the Australian east coast, so I won’t be wearing sleeveless dresses all that much.

This is linked to MMM.

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Stencilled Stuff

This must be a very boring blog for anyone wanting to see different patterns as I am using always the same ones right now, and mostly a modified version of the Tessuti Mandy. My attention is focussed completely on the painting of the fabric, with no real thought other than producing sweatshirts and long sleeve tees. Not all that silly as it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, so sweatshirts and long sleeve tees with a cowl, or skivvies as they are known here, are just right with my pants to keep me warm.

Here is the latest crop. They are all stencilled with freezer paper stencils, using various techniques to produce these.

The stencil for this one was cut on the Cricut at work, because I thought the rectangles needed to be exact for the pattern to work. The middle and sides are on separate stencils, as the whole front or back would not have fitted the maximum cutting width of the machine. The two parts needed to line up exactly. Hard to do manually.

It turned out quite well, but because of the large amount of painted areas the skivvy feels a bit plasticky. Unfortunately on dark colours it is not possible to use lighter dye, and with screen printing ink several coats are needed or alternatively supercover inks, and both options have the same heavy slick feel. At least the jersey is a double weight viscose and there is enough unpainted fabric to let it breathe.

Next is another viscose jersey skivvy, with much thinner fabric this time. At least the screen printing ink stabilised the flimsy stuff a little. The design is good, but I am not really happy with the fabric.

It looks a bit short but goes well with my high waisted Arthur pants.

With randomly scattered motifs like these black tulips I draw a few versions of the motif first on paper or thin cardboard, then cut these out and use them as a template on the freezer paper. This way I can rub off my pencil outlines if I need to rearrange a motif to produce a nice even look of scattered flowers. After I am satisfied with my arrangement I cut out the motifs with a craft knife. Fortunately I like large prints rather than small ones, so this is not too labour intensive. If I ever wanted a Mille Fleur fabric (which I won’t), I would certainly use the cutting machine.

Another skivvy to use up that annoying fabric. With only one motif and using dye instead of screen printing ink, the fabric looks and feels even worse. Not the best purchase I ever made, this is what happens when you buy fabric in a hurry. DH, dear man that he is, can’t understand why three hours are not enough time for me at a fabric market, but we know better, don’t we?

As already mentioned, I also produced some sweatshirts using the same Mandy pattern, which can be worn as a second layer over the skivvies. Nobody takes heating seriously in our part of the country because it doesn’t get that cold, so something warm when I am sitting for hours in my studio either painting or sewing is certainly appreciated.

The rhino shirt is based on a sculpture by Jovan Blat I found and liked on Pinterest. Just the sort of stylised minimalist shape that appeals to me. I used the outline and initially the big rhino was supposed to be white, but the blue just looks better, so blue rhino it is. (Did I mention that I really love blue?) The ink used is screen printing ink and the blue parts are quite thick, but as there is not much of the blue the plastic texture doesn’t bother me as much as with the striped skivvy.

The stencil was freezer paper again as with all the tops shown in this post. I have already gone through a whole roll of the stuff, but even shipping it from the US it is still much cheaper than acetate and getting crisp edges is so much easier with something that actually sticks to the fabric.

More blue here, the shapes are hand drawn on the freezer paper, then cut out with a craft knife, ironed to the fabric and painted with heavily thickened blue dye. The dye leaves the surface of the sweatshirt beautifully soft, much better than if I had used screen-printing ink. Alas, dye is only possible on light coloured fabric.

And last but not least a merino sports knit, an older jumper I refashioned and printed to make it new again. I love the fabric, a sort of French terry with high quality man-made on the outside and merino on the inside. Great for printing and very warm and comfy to wear.

The lighter grey tree silhouette was done with a stencil and once dry I overpainted this with black accents using a small brush. Because the outer surface of the fabric is man-made, dye is not an option despite the relatively light colour. But as I did not need a thick layer of paint to cover a dark background the different hand of the screen printing ink is not very noticeable.

I refashioned the hemline to make it more current but the cowl is still the huge version I liked when I did Lagenlook. These days I am a bit tired of that and have gone to smaller cowls, more a sort of funnel style.

Linked to MMM.

Carbon No More

I am not usually into messages on my tops, but I wanted to try stencilling some writing and this popped into my head. I wanted to try writing as I now have access to a stencil cutter at work (yay!), which has made things possible I could not have done cutting a freezer paper stencil manually with a craft knife.

Not bad for a first try, and I learnt a few lessons. Freezer paper with such intricate cut-outs is not easily reusable, it tends to tear unless you have an extra pair of hands to help when you pull it off the first print. I reused it anyway, with the predictable result of small blobs where bits of paper stencil were missing. Fortunately it’s not all that noticeable when you see the top as a whole.

Also any running writing has floating bits, such as the inside of the a and e etc. These teensy weensy bits are not attached to the freezer paper stencil and would have to be prised lose from the stencil mats sticky grip with tweezers and placed individually on the fabric where they belong. Cripes, what a job! I solved the problem by leaving them off, which looks ok, but needs to be at least considered when designing something with writing.

A successful project tends to fire me with zeal, and as I have one foot in a moon boot right now I can’t do too much running around. Time in the sewing room fends off boredom and stops me from get5ing morose. Making stencilled skivvies is fun and useful in the cold weather we are having right now.

I came across this poster with a stylised face on Pinterest and thought it would work well for a top.

I hope W Art Design in Milano doesn’t mind me using it and here is the finished garment.

I think I should have put the motifs on the left and right closer towards the middle, but it’s too late now. They look ok in the flat, but once they are on a round body they look too far to the sides on a wide boxy top.

For the next skivvy I drew the outline in pencil on freezer paper, then cut out with a craft knife, as it was too wide for the cutting machine. I could have divided it up, but there wasn’t that much cutting to do and it wasn’t intricate enough to bother with the machine.

You may wonder why I drew on a stencil when I could just as well paint freehand straight onto the top. First of all you can alter pencil lines on paper but once you have dye on fabric it is too late for second thoughts. Also a freezer paper stencil makes it so much easier and quicker to achieve clean outlines on my motifs. Because of the roughness of fabric the edges of a brush stroke tend to be uneven, but a stencil fixes that and also prevents dye from continuing to seep into the capillaries of the fabric.

I quite like the colour combo, maybe more than the shapes.

And last as well as least is a top I don’t like all that much. I was pretty disappointed when I first did it, because it didn’t at all look like the idea i had in my head. But it is growing on me and in any case it is quite useful to wear when I am doing messy stuff, because I don’t have to worry about ruining it.

All patterns are the Tessuti Mandy again, with a cowl/funnel/turtle neck as it is the middle of winter here and I like having something to come up a little higher on my neck.

Hello Spring!

Yes, obviously it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, but these tops were made for my European trip, where it was emphatically spring with fantastic sunny and warm weather. Travelling between the hemispheres really brings home to me how much we are influenced by the seasons in our colour choices without realising it. After a few times feeling drab and out of sync during my visits, this time I wanted to have at least a couple of garments in my suitcase that would blend in with the happy spring atmosphere at my destination.

This was my inspiration, you can’t get any more light, airy and suitable for spring than those beautiful light blue flowers on white.

But I didn’t really want a tunic, my voluminous Arthur pants demand something much shorter. Like a cropped Mandy with cuffs instead of sleeves.

It was difficult to judge how dark to make my blue dye because it always looks quite a bit lighter after it has been washed out. So I used too much dye powder and my flowers ended up much darker than intended. Never mind, there is always the next project to improve on the mistakes of the last one.

I have always found it difficult up until now to do a pattern of randomly scattered motifs. It doesn’t really work to use a stencil for a single motif over and over, the way you can do when you arrange your motifs in an orderly grid pattern.

I solved the problem with a stencil that covers the whole pattern piece of my garment. To start with I drew four slightly different flowers on scrap paper, cut them out and used them as a template for my freezer paper stencil. It was then easy to space the flowers out randomly in a pleasing manner, without awkward holes or crowding. Once I had traced around the flowers with pencil I could cut them out with a craft knife and ironed the finished stencil to my fabric. I coloured in the flowers with dye thickened very heavily with sodium alginate gel. This stops the dye from running under the edges of the stencil.

My fabric was again a repurposed cotton/viscose Ikea sheet, pre- prepared with soda ash solution and dried. The soda ash treatment is necessary because it takes a while to stencil the flowers, and if I add the soda ash solution to the dye it will weaken before I am finished, risking an uneven result. I didn’t want the flowers on the front of the top to end up paler than on the back.

Being a bit lazy I did not make white centres on my flowers, as this would have meant cutting out little circles from the freezer paper to keep the dye off. As it happens this is fortunate as with the darker blue I think a black or dark blue centre will look better.

So here is the altered version, with the freshly added dark blue centres, still on newspaper on my cutting table.

I am not sure if it really is an improvement, somehow the plain version has a charm of its own.

As a minimalist I think I have two fears, cutting off too much fabric and putting on too much paint. Not sure if I haven’t done the latter with this top.

No such doubts with the second top, which was painted freehand. I used a thick stencil brush and heavily thickened dye to prevent the dye from running. This time I added soda ash powder to my dye mix because I thought I would need less time to get my painting done. I first did the lighter blue circles and let this cure overnight, then added the darker blue accents the next day. This way the dyes don’t mix. Dye painting is not for the impatient and I hate that side of it, but the results keep me coming back for more. The colours are so much more vibrant than screen printing ink and the hand of the fabric does not change at all.

The pattern for both tops is once again the Tessuti Mandy, with the boat neck changed to a round neck and cuffs instead of the long sleeves.

Stencilling notes

• Cotton viscose fabric briefly soaked in soda ash solution and dried
• Freezer paper stencil, joined to yield required size. This is easily done by overlapping and joining with hot iron. Sticks well.
• Cut stencil with craft knife and ironed to cut-out garment pieces
• Painted flowers with stubby brush and heavily thickened dye, approx 2.5 teaspoons of sodium alginate per 250ml of water
• Cured overnight, washed out and sewed up
• Added dark blue centres later with straight dye and soda ash, no thickening

Painting notes:

• Cotton viscose fabric
• painted circles with stubby brush, on cut-out garment pieces
• Dye heavily thickened with sodium alginate, approx 2.5 teaspoons per 250ml and soda ash added
• Painted light blue circles first and let cure/dry overnight
• Painted darker accents the next day, let cure/dry
• Washed and sewed up

New Love

After my Henri Matisse phase I now have a decided crush on a Japanese artist, Samiro Yunoki. This is the second time I have used his art, this time more of a copy than mere inspiration. I hope he doesn’t mind.

I repurposed a top which is quite a few years old and the style was looking dated. But the fabric is an absolutely wonderful crinkle linen I bought in Europe, the type you can do anything you like with and it won’t ever look rumpled. Far too good to get rid of even if it is almost 10:years old.

So I re-fashioned the top to something similar to the Tessuti Athina, to make the style more current. Then I stencilled it and here we are.

Japanese artists are often minimalist, which is right up my alley., and Yunoki definitely is. Here is another one of his paintings which absolutely speaks to me.

I hope he doesn’t mind my appropriation. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The pattern for the second top was the Tessuti Mandy, with added funnel neck.

Stencilling notes

• Stencilled with black screen printing ink, this time NOT supercover. Works better for black, not as gluggy and easier to apply.
• Blue is white supercover screen printing ink, tinted with blue acrylic

Linked to MMM.

Painted Lady

Looking back on my recent makes i think that I like my dye painted tops best, like this one.

So why not keep going into this direction and make some more? I saw this painting by Samiro Yunoki and thought it could be adapted.

I drew something similar, turned 90 degrees and multiples of it, on my fabric with pencil.

Then I filled it in with thickened dye, front, back and sleeve pieces.

I used heavily thickened black dye which made nice sharp outlines, then filled in between. It probably took about 2 hours. Of course, if I had screen printed this it would have taken mere minutes, but I like the hand painting. Plus I only need one garment for me to wear, not lots to sell.

The fabric is cotton and meant to be a ‘muslin’, not one to try out a pattern but to try out a painting idea. I have a piece of linen in the same light grey colour which will be my ‘real’ project. I like the painting as shown above, with just the black, and think this is what I will do with the linen. Maybe only make the black design a little larger.

But for the trial piece I have added a colour wash to see what this will look like. This was in the interest of gaining more experience, as colour washes are a bit unpredictable, but of course I also don’t need two tops the same. Then there is the issue of cotton versus linen. With the simple black design there is a real difference in the final look of the garment between an upmarket fabric versus something more humble. The cotton wouldn’t look nearly as good ‘naked’ as the linen, so I thought maybe more colour would help.

It does, but as a certifiable fibre snob I still think the cotton looks a bit cheap. Fair enough when I am using a recycled doona cover. Maybe a heavier cotton would give a more upmarket looking result.

The colour wash turned out quite well, except for the spotty look that I suspect is due to water drops.

Never mind, let not perfection be the enemy of good. 😉

The sewing pattern used is once more the Tessuti Athina and the sewing details are on PatternReview.

Painting notes

• Painted on light grey cotton soaked in soda ash solution and dried
• Black abstract shapes outlined in pencil, then painted with heavily thickened black dye and a stubby brush
• Dye was thickened with sodium alginate powder, 2 teaspoons to 250 ml of water
• Cured for 48 hours and washed out
• Soaked briefly in soda ash solution
• Painted wet with large brush, using red and blue dye powders dissolved in plain water, no thickener
• Cured for 24 hours, washed out, dried and sewn up

Linked to MMM.

The Evolving Dress Part 2

Can’t help myself! I had to fiddle with this dress which was not bad, but not really good either.

So I overpainted it in blue. I did this double layered, meaning that I was too lazy to open up the side seams and lay it flat. Note to self: single layered will give a better result! The blue is possibly a little more mottled than I wanted, although not too bad.

I could of course have immersion dyed it, but I wanted some colour variations. Subtle ones, so I could print over the top. This was the motif I wanted to use.

What I didn’t count on was that the criss-cross brush strokes would still be very visible.

I don’t think overprinting would work with this background, too busy, even with low contrast prints like in black.

Do I like the blue better than the green? I do, although that is a purely personal preference. Arguably the blue brush strokes had more impact on the green.

But I didn’t really like that particular shade of green and blue is my favourite colour, so there!

I might mock up black prints in Photoshop and see if it would look good against my expectations. But this is probably the end of the road for this dress. I quite like it, but let’s see if it will get worn or not!

The Evolving Dress?

Experimentation is essential if you want to go on learning, and not every experiment is a resounding success. I have been wanting to try brushing freehand lines with dye onto fabric, something like these paintings:

Black on white looks good, or black on khaki or beige, but the fabric I happened to have available was more of the light green I used for the turkey top. Light green is not an easy colour for this kind of thing and I did not want to pair it with black again. So instead of maximum contrast I tried for low contrast, which meant a mid blue with the green.

The result is sort of ok, but with hindsight I should probably have used a darker blue. Not that there is any guarantee that I would have been happier with the outcome.

A project being ‘ok’ is not really what I am after. I had the dress hanging on the outside of my wardrobe for a week or so, trying to make up my mind what to do with it. When I was thinking about it, I was certain that I wanted to overpaint and turn it into something different. But every time I actually looked at it I thought that it was ‘quite nice’.

You can see from the back view why I thought a darker blue would have been better. I could still add more lines with an indigo blue. But don’t be surprised if this dress is completely mid blue next time you see it, with or without block prints, or whatever.

But there is no rush, I can overpaint any time, so I thought I would let life decide. If it turns out that I am keen to take the dress out of my wardrobe and wear it, all and good. If it languishes unworn, I will have another go at it.

Whether it will be an improvement is anyone’s guess. 🙂

The pattern used is the Tessuti Lily Linen Dress and the fabric is another Ikea Nattjasmin sheet, which is a mix of cotton and viscose.

Dye Painting Notes

• Drimarene K fibre reactive dye powder Blue RL, mixed with sodium alginate thickener
• 1 teaspoon sodium alginate powder mixed with 250ml of water in blender — not really thick enough, should be 2-3 teaspoons.
• Left to cure for several days, very little dye coming out in the wash

Don’t let the Turkeys …

This bird didn’t really remind me of a turkey until I had stencilled a top with it all over.

Not a problem really, I like turkeys, except I happened to have arranged my birds badly on the available space.

Can you see the hole in the middle? I started with the large version, as is logical, but then had problems how to arrange the smaller ones nicely.

The back is better, but not much. What was I thinking?

Idiot! I should have modelled this on Photoshop first. Now I have a big empty space in the middle.

It’s worse when worn on the body and not great from any angle.

The pendant helps a bit, but not that much. Certainly not on the back. 🙂

There are only two options, learn to live with it as it is, or put something into the empty space. Plants? Smaller turkeys? I was really unsure how to fix this.

In the end I thought I would try smaller version of the birds, but cut out two pieces of paper of the size I was aiming for to try out placements. Once you have done the stencilling it’s too late to change your mind.

That made me more confident that I could fill the empty space without making it look even worse. I am much happier now with the look of the shirt.

Stencilling Notes

• The large and small turkeys are stencilled using freezer paper
• The medium birds are block printed using adhesive foam on a perspex backing.
• The ink used is Permaset screen printing ink, black
• The fabric is cotton/viscose sheeting
• The ink was initially cured for 30 mins in the dryer
• For the birds I added later I used a hot iron to set the ink

Linked to MMM.

Block Printing Tutorial

Now that I have got the hang of iMovie I am fired with zeal to post some more tutorials.

Block printing is quite a simple process and you can either carve your own block, or if you want to get started with a minimum of fuss you can buy one. There are a lot of wooden blocks from India online. and Etsy has some carved from wood and rubber as well.

I used to carve my blocks from Ezy Carve rubber sheets, but these days I find it easier to use adhesive foam. With adhesive foam, your printing shapes can be cut out with scissors or a craft knife, which is much faster. However, there is a trick to using adhesive foam successfully, you need to build up several layers. I will blog about this some time soon. For a beginner I would recommend buying a block, either wood or rubber, to make things as easy as possible.

The video will have given you an overview over the process, but there are bound to be some questions.

What ink to use? Screen printing ink is fine, you don’t need anything special for block printing.

What on earth is a brayer? A rubber roller that transfers a nice, even layer of ink onto your block. This is available from craft and art material shops.

What sort of fabric can you use? Anything really, screen printing ink is not fussy. Use an old sheet or tea towel to practise. You can even print on poly. For a trial run you could print on paper and use this as gift wrap, or use your practice fabric as a furoshiki (fabric wrap which replaces a plastic bag).

Why am I sometimes using a hammer in the video and sometimes not? There needs to be pressure to produce a nice block print. When I do my test prints, I try to suss out what will work the best. With an Ezy Carve block a hammer works best, with a foam sheet on top of the Perspex to protect it. With adhesive foam, firm pressure by hand seems to be enough.

Why do I wash out my block when I am halfway through printing my garment? Ink accumulates in the narrow crevices of the block as you print. After a while this makes the prints messy. You can use cotton buds to clean out the surplus ink, or you can wash the block from time to time. I find it works well to wash out all the surplus ink between printing the front and the back of the garment. Make sure the block is dry before continuing.

How do I know where to place the block to get a nice even pattern? If you have a close look you can see that I line up the bottom corners of the printing block backing with certain points on the print below.

I also keep a certain distance between the previous print and the next one.

You can also draw a grid with chalk to help you place your prints.

If using a wooden block, a backing is not necessary and because the block follows the outline of the motif, you can see exactly where you are placing it. The same goes for a small Ezy Carve block. But as soon as the motif gets bigger, and I like big motifs, an Ezy Carve block becomes difficult to handle and a backing becomes desirable. With adhesive foam there is no choice, you need something to stick the foam to, so a backing is essential.

For this particular block I used a black piece of perspex as a backing, which is not such a good idea. Normally I use transparent, so I can see exactly where my block is being placed. However, as many people will no doubt use an opaque backing of some kind, I thought I would try this.

Using opaque backing for a block is limiting but doable. I can use the corners and edges of the backing as reference points, but if I wanted, for example, to do a random jumbled pattern, such as the one below, I would not be able to tell if my distribution of motifs is nice and balanced.

You need to see the shape of your motif as you place it, like the wooden block in the pic above. If you use a rectangular backing sheet that doesn’t hug the shape of the motif, it needs to be transparent so you can see where the actual printing shape is. I buy off-cuts from a perspex place for very little and get Mr Rivergum to cut these up for me into the size I need. He uses a router or a saw.

Materials list:

• Printing block, wood or rubber or adhesive foam with backing
• Fabric or you could try paper to start with
• Brayer (buy from craft or art materials store)
• Old spoon, metal or plastic. This can be washed and re-used.
• Screen printing ink, I used Permaset. Water based ink is easiest and most environmentally friendly. I used about a tablespoon of ink for this project. Block printing is very economical with ink!
• Plastic or paper plate to roll your brayer to load it with ink. This can be washed and re- used.
• Newspaper to protect your printing surface. This can be re-used many times.
• If you don’t have a dryer, you can use an iron to heat set the ink. Follow the instructions on the label.

I have been waxing lyrically for several posts now how soda ash and dye transform linen from a high maintenance ironing nightmare into something much less wrinkle prone. I am happy to say that block printing linen also makes it better behaved. It does not make linen soft and drapey like soda ash, but the ink somehow stabilises the fabric and make it less inclined to wrinkle. Or possibly the motifs distract the eye? Not sure which one, but either way it’s a win.

One last thing to be aware of: you will have lots of little ‘oopsies’ when you start your journey. By this I mean getting ink somewhere it is not wanted, or a block slipping out of your hand and dropping on your fabric. Or a bit of water causing a bleed. Or… or… or…

Don’t get discouraged. I generally find that the ‘mistake’ or ‘accident’ bothers me far less once a garment is completed. It seems to become subsumed into the whole and the imperfections of something hand made are part of its charm.

If the oopsie still annoys you, you can touch up an incomplete print with a brush and I have even mixed up ink to match the background colour of the fabric to cover an unintended ink blob.

A good example of something that went wrong with this particular project was on the back of this top.

Can you see where a print was placed in the wrong spot? I was distracted by the videoing and placed one of the prints too high. Quite a bit too high. But you know what, when you see the whole it doesn’t really matter.

I bet nobody but me will ever notice, and you won’t tell, will you? 🙂