Hi! I just finished a workshop by artist Dionne Swift on creating abstract embroidered landscapes with a perspective that lets the viewer enter the piece. I know that doing more than one sketch and piece is great for learning, but I'm usually impatient to get on with the next thing! 😁Here's the beginning of a learning adventure.
Perspective and a sketch
The assignment was to find an image with a perspective, sketch it and then use free motion quilting (FMQ) to stitch or embroider it. Here's my first finished piece.
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| Perspective - free motion embroidered |
I started by choosing a photo that invites the viewer in. It's from last year's fall trip to Agawa Canyon.
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| Agawa Canyon in Northern Ontario |
The next step was to convert it to black and white. It's still a great picture for this exercise. Lots of contrast and perspective.
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| Black and white picture in the Agawa Canyon |
I then made the sketch. Can you tell that I'm not used to working with a pencil? My hands were covered in black!
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| Sketch of the black and white photo |
I'm afraid that my sketch got lost in translation when I started embroidering. About half-way through the stitching, I realised that I had lost the perspective that I was looking for. So, back to some sketching!
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| My sketch made this look far in the distance without adding the perspective I was looking for |
This time I drew a sketch right on the fabric. I forgot to take a photo, but you can see the green FriXion pen marks as I'm stitching. I also kept the photo that I was using close by on my phone. The sketch is different from the original one. Sometimes I was more accurate and sometimes I just made it up as I went along. 😊
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| Following the sketch on the fabric |
I stitched most of the piece with black cotton thread - nothing fancy, just my go-to piecing black thread. Three bobbins of black thread were used in this piece!
About half way through, I decided that I didn't want to stitch the lighter sections in black. You're supposed to use black but not as densely stitched to show lighter areas. Instead I found a spruce tree green that looks like a dark gray next to black. The only gray thread I have are too light and would have created too much contrast.
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| Perspective - free motion stitched |
Here are the two stitched pieces.
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| It really was worth making a second piece to get it right |
What I learned
- I'm glad that I didn't do my usual thing, which is to finish what I started and just call it done!
- I really wanted to get the perspective right and drawing the sketch on the fabric helped me do that.
- What I didn't know at the time is that in the Further Development video, Dionne suggested that we use colour in our sketches and our embroidery. I ended up using a spruce green in the lighter areas instead of just stitching less densely.
- I'm really happy with my piece and I would like to make at least one more version with some colour.
- This one will be a little smaller, maybe an 8" hoop instead of a 10".
- It's also possible to add paint - wouldn't it be cool if the water was blue, maybe with some water colour paint? I would want to do this before stitching it, in case the paint part didn't turn out.
- Dionne stitches her piece on a tightly woven, but not felted, wool. That would eliminate the puckers at the edges that I got from using a piece of cotton. I'll see if I can find something like this.
Related links
- Dionne Swift website, Instagram
- Dionne Swift: From pencil to stitch article on TextileArtist.org
- Agawa Canyon
- Fall Wonderland, October 16, 2022
Linking parties
I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties. Why not check them out? Put your foot down, Sew & Tell, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?, Peacock Party, Patchwork & Quilts, TGIFF, Beauties Pageant,
I've linked this post up to Meadow Mist's November's Favorite Finish Monthly Link-up.