hand embroidery – Page 7

Mojo Mini Quilts

Posted on July 19, 2019July 20, 2019 by Laura Kate

This project is inspired after viewing a class by Suzie Williams, on BluPrint.com. The gist of the lesson is to improvise a mini quilt which illustrates one of various design principles. These quilts are sized to be framed as wall art. I chose to base my design on the concept of Rhythm. Here is my sketch (just a few swooping lines, really minimal) and my chosen fabrics.

I had recently purchased the black printed fabric, which is just a scrap in the picture. I like the idea of repeating bars of the circle shapes on a background of orange.

The design is cut up, so that it can be pinned to the fabric and fabric cut out. I am using a gray background fabric. Each element is appliqued to the background, using glue as baste. I had never basted fabric with white glue before, but it seems to work just fine. Here is the design at the beginning of the layout stage.

**Truly fun little cogs in multi colors.**

After a few adjustments to the design, and more than one re-cut of the shapes, I finally have all the pieces in place, glued down, pin basted and ready for sewing.

I started by zig-zagging along the raw edges, to minimize fraying. Next I stitched some swoops of machine quilting in black and orange. Finally, I finished up with hand embroidery. It was fun choosing floss and stitches to accentuate the circles.

Here is the finished mini quilt, ready for framing or binding.

What a fun project, even if it did take most of the day to complete! The Mojo Mini quilt class can be found here: https://www.mybluprint.com/playlist/11422/20696

painting, sewing

Inspired by O’Keefe part 2

Posted on June 5, 2019June 6, 2019 by Laura Kate

Here is the final result of my O’Keefe inspired fiber object. I have to say, it only partially matches my vision for the piece. Something happened between the sketch, the painting and the embroidery. Take a look:

Here is my original sketch for a moonflower. I was very happy with this effort:

Here is the flower after roughing in the design with fabric paint.

Even though I am not experienced in painting, I was fairly happy with this result. So I guess the only part of the effort that disappointed me was the embroidery.

Dear friends, what do you think? Do you have any recommendations for me that could improve my final result? I am eager to learn.

colorwork, drawing, hand embroidery, sewing

Inspired by O’Keefe

Posted on June 4, 2019 by Laura Kate

My fiber efforts have been rather uninspired over the last two days, so no new posts. Then I picked up this book written by Georgia O’Keefe. It is an autobiography told in her own words and in beautifully reproduced images of her paintings. It got my creative thoughts moving again.

While she spent most of her life living in and painting the American Southwest, in the early stages of her career O’Keefe was best known for her large-scale paintings of flowers. Here is what she has to say about these works:

Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself – I’ll paint what I see – what the flower is to me but I’ll paint is big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.
Exhibition catalog, An American Place, 1939

So I decided to create a fiber flower, because I want to look closely at a flower. I chose to make a Moonflower, partly because of its star-like shape, and partly because I don’t see them growing around here. When I lived in Texas, I grew some moonflowers. It was way too hot to enjoy the garden during the day. Instead I sat outside at dusk, when I could watch the moonflowers swirl open.

Here is a pencil sketch I made of my moonflower:

I plan to use white poplin for the flower, with fabric paint on the shaded areas and embroidery on the bright areas. Here are some green fabrics I have chosen for the background and the flower shape I will cut from the white poplin.

The next steps are to piece together and sew the background.

**Background with paper template showing flower placement**

Tomorrow I paint.

hand embroidery, sewing

Henry’s Haiku

Posted on May 20, 2019 by Laura Kate

During a recent visit, my grandson handed me this post-it note containing a haiku that he had written.

Henry is a boy of few words, so I got almost no explanation on the source of these bonne mots. My husband reminded me that we had visited the zoo with Henry, and given him a camera to use. The poem may have been inspired by the sight of a jaguar cub. Here is a photo that my husband took that day at the zoo.

I am inspired by this poem and the photograph to make a fiber object featuring a white whiskered cat and Henry’s haiku. I’m planning to use applique and embroidery techniques. There is a very nice image in NatGeo of a jaguar cub in the jungles of Brazil with a good layout.

Here are some fabric options. I am thinking about using the color washed gold fabric as the background for the piece.

To be continued………….

hand embroidery, knitting

The Luna Moth Returns

Posted on May 19, 2019May 20, 2019 by Laura Kate

I’m finally getting back to the little knitted baby dress. After I became inspired by the Luna moth in my backyard, I decided to embroider a Luna on the green dress. I had finished knitting it a few weeks ago. Today I completed the embroidery. Here is the Luna moth image which served as my model.

And here is the baby dress from the front view.

My plan is to work the embroidery on the back of the dress. But first, I will need to reinforce the yarn so that it can support the embroidery stitches.

This is a very lightweight version of fusible interfacing. It actually flexes with the knitted fabric. Next I drew a pattern of the moth and pinned it to the dress.

I was forced to shorten the moth’s back wings, in order to fit the dimensions of the dress. To transfer this pattern to the dress I simply stitched all around it with white thread. The embroidery took a couple of hours. I tried to use colors that were true to nature. Here is a picture of the finished piece.