Embroidery

As I still had the backing piece from the muslin screen print, I wanted to sew into into it and use the flower designs from the prints that were already on the piece. I drew out and made some samples before I actually started on the piece itself. 

This design was created by putting one flower on top of another - layering up whilst drawing and then sewing the lines. I think this is a strong piece and so will definitely be using this. Also, I want to stick to a certain colour palate, so I will be using the colours from the prints that I have already done.

I don't think this one is as successful as the others - I feel it is lacking something so I won't be using this design to embroider and sew.

This is my favourite, It took a while to do as I have coloured the flower in with thread on the sewing machine, but I think it gives it a textured appearance and feel, and that is what I am trying to portray. 

This is the back of the coloured flower, and it is quite interesting and can be used as the front, but I prefer the front so this will remain the back.

Before I could start sewing into the fabric, I had to draw on the flowers that I wanted to sew. I did this by using the acetate copies and putting them onto a light box and then drawing onto the fabric in pencil. 

I selected the flowers designs that I wanted to use, and drew them on randomly onto the piece. This was hard to do because again I had to think about where I was placing them. To do the whole length took me a few days as the flowers that needed filling in with thread took a while to do. I then decided that I was going to attach a backing fabric onto the length as you could see the stitches at the back, and it gave the piece an unfinished look. 

One of the reasons that I decided to sew into the backing cotton piece of the muslin print was that I had originally wanted to sew into the muslin piece, but when I tried to do this, the machine just took the fabric in as it has a thin weave, and is not really strong enough to sew into. It just made the whole thing look messy, and I had to keep on taking the needle out of the fabric and starting again. Cotton is a lot thicker, so this problem was solved. 

As the embroidered flowers seemed to work so well, I thought of making some to sell in the shop at the exhibition. I thought of making individual flowers, and sticking them to wooden tiles, and selling them in sets of 3. It would take time as I wanted to make the coloured flowers, and filling them in takes a lot of time. I wanted each set of 3 to be different, each flower different, and stick to a set colour palate for each set. 

I added beads to 2 of the flowers from one of the sets to make it different, and make the set unique.