Now here’s an unusual use for embroidery. Recently I’ve become so interested in acrylic paints that I’ve joined a local painting group, where we try out different ways to use these paints. Acrylics are great for printing, and some people in the group have been experimenting with printing using textured papers and laces as printing blocks. These immediately reminded me of embroidery, and I wondered if you could perhaps print with embroideries. So I made a small version of one of the tapa fish, painted it with acrylic paint and used it as a “stamp” to print the image on paper.
The inked-up embroidery
My first attempt at embroidery printing
Even though I still have a lot to learn about printing with embroidery, it turned out a lot better than I had expected. The image was surprisingly delicate, and it faithfully replicated most of the little details of the embroidery. OK, it’s still pretty rough around the edges, but this was after all intended to be used for painting, and painting can sometimes be all the better for a bit of roughness and spontaneity. If you wanted a neater result you could trim the embroidery close to the stitching and glue it to a wooden block. The rest of the painting group were scandalised that I had used a piece of embroidery like this (“how can you bear to cover it with paint?”) but when I explained that the embroidery machine could turn out many copies in a few minutes they became interested. I now have several ideas of how to use embroideries in paintings and will see if anything comes of it
It would also be interesting to see if you could use it as a stamp on fabric also. Kind of have your fabric match your embroidery design. Hmmmm