Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Embroidery: Collage Art Work

In anticipation of the upcoming Turtle Creek Fine Art Show in Dallas in 2 weeks, I've decided to stitch a selection of collage pieces.  They will be good for those customers wanting to buy a piece to take home with them.  I'll have larger pieces too but not everyone can commit to those at first sight.

These collage pieces will be predominantly sewn on the embroidery machine.  The embroidery machine is basically a computerized sewing machine.  It can only stitch the program it can read.  I can buy digitized files and I do buy those for certain projects, such as the kitchen towels; but, for something I want specifically "arty", I can use my design software.  I am a very low level user with the software.  If someone had any sketching ability, it would be a fabulous tool.  Unfortunately, that's not me.  I stick with what I can do.

My idea is to buy stretched canvases and stretch my collages around them.
For the collages, I am using a variety of background pieces and then interesting strips leftover from my past raw edge work.  I will be adding some embroidered patches, buttons and some beads where they will enhance the design concept.

Here are some progress photos from the 1st collage:


I'm using some leftover pieces of bleached muslin from flour sack towels I stitched earlier.  The frayed selvedge really appealed to me.


I am limited by the size of the hoop so I have to rehoop in sections.  I love the perfect stitching with the imperfect fabric swatches. 


 Most of the piece has been stitched.  I'll go to the edges and flip the stitch direction.



This is a strip leftover from another raw edge piece.  The tiny bits of yellow really called to me. 



A very thin purple cotton strip is paired with the chunky raw edge piece.


Close Detail of the stitching


Tomorrow I'll post the finished piece.  
When it is this much fun, it doesn't feel like work.

1 comment:

  1. I really appreciate seeing and reading about your process, Debra. As I was reading I kept thinking "yes, yes". I see exactly what you're doing. Love the raw edge. Can't wait to see the finished piece. Yay!!

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