Fabric painting – Page 3 – The Accidental Embroiderer

The non-cubist bird

17 October 2011MiaFabric paintingLeave a comment

Right – the PC has been coaxed back to life, and things seem back to normal. But the crisis reminded me that my back-up routine had been sketchy to say the least. Most of my older designs had been backed up, but not all of them, and not the more recent ones. So I immediately backed EVERYTHING up to a small portable hard drive. You never think that computer crashes can happen to you, but even in these days of improved computer reliability it can, so never skip your regular back-ups the way I did

A few weeks ago I was playing around with the idea of a bird done in a cubist style, and I did a few sketches of some roughly cubist birds. Most of them weren’t really in a genuinely cubist style, but I thought they still might make interesting embroideries so I’ve started digitising them Here’s a sketch of one of the non-cubist birds

Not cubist, but with possibilities

and here’s the first version of the embroidery.

The bird digitised and stitched out, using hand-painted fabric

It was really a very simple design so it seemed to ask for some added complexity in the form of some painted fabric. I haven’t got the colours right, some of the details need changing (for example,the "shoulders" are wrong, and the shape of the neck in the sketch is better than in the embroidery) and of course the background should also have some added interest painted in, but all the same it’s an interesting start which I’ll continue with

The Three Geese (or maybe albatrosses?)

1 October 2011MiaFabric paintingLeave a comment

Here’s another design from some forgotten source. I found some old sketches in my files and liked the crooked neck of the bird, so I digitised three of them sitting on a sea wall somewhere. The background is of course painted and the geese (albatrosses?) were appliquéd on it. Degitising the three birds as separate large designs made it possible to make quite a large panel out of them

The large bird panel

The Charley Harper yellowbird panel – almost there

25 August 2011MiaDesigns for projects / Fabric painting2 Comments

I’ve finally finished all 8 pieces of the Charley Harper bellpull and stitched them together. It turned out more or less OK, but somehow the whole thing was not really what I’d intended. The masses of leaves tended to obscure the outlines of the birds, and the birds somehow looked flat and undefined. Also the differences in tone of the hand-painted fabric backgrounds made the breaks between the separate panels too obvious

So I turned again to brush and paints. First I made the outlines of the birds darker and more defined, and I made the background to the birds paler, so that they stood out more. Finally I blurred the boundaries between the individual panels so that the whole panel looked more like a single piece of fabric

The Charley Harper bellpull after painting

The long thin shape looks a bit distorted but that's mostly due to the way I had to photograph it – in real life it isn't quite so bad. The bellpull isn’t entirely finished – in particular the individual panels need more work to blend each one into its neighbour. But it’s getting there. Now all I have to do is figure out how to mount it

The Cubist fish

12 August 2011MiaFabric paintingLeave a comment

I have no idea where this idea came from. It may have first occurred to me while I was working on the pieced winter tree and mulling over the ideas of Cubism. I seem to remember that one of the Cubists (Braque?) used a fish on a plate as part of a still-life, and the combination of the fish shapes on an oval platter was appealing.

The cubist fish

This design incorporates painted fabric for the background, the platter, and the fish bodies, and the fabric was then overstitched with layers of thread. The whole thing was a real pain to stitch out. In the first place it’s a very large design, and in the second place I had to stitch through three layers of fabrics painted with acrylic paints, and the paint makes the fabric very hard and brittle. But the result was interesting, and this one is going in our September exhibition

Finished goat

22 July 2011MiaFabric painting / New approaches / Pieced embroideryLeave a comment

And here is the optical goat panel, stitched out and stitched together. I’m reasonably happy with it. The main point of the panel is to intrigue the eye, and make it work to see both the large image of the goat, and the small intricate designs from which it’s made up, and I think it does this. I also think it works better than the optical bird, partly because the individual squares are larger and so it’s possible to make each small design more interesting in itself. And I think the painted fabric helps give the squares more impact. The colours on this photo are a lot paler than the original but it gives the general idea

The finished optical goat panel (approximately 17 x 20 inches)

But I’m not sure where this idea is going. It’s a little like the zentangle designs – there’s only so much you can do with the general concept, and after a while it all begins to look much the same. I wonder if irregular shapes would give a different effect from squares…

Goat in progress

15 July 2011MiaDesigns for projects / Fabric paintingLeave a comment

Following on from the Optical Bird, I’ve drawn and digitised an Optical Goat. The basic principle is very simple. First there’s just a simple outline drawing of the goat, divided into equal squares (in this case, 10 cm x 10 cm)

The basic goat drawing overlaid with a grid of 10 cm squares

Then it’s just a matter of filling each square with a little design that is both complete in itself, and which contributes to the overall shape of the goat. In some ways this is a bit like doing zentangle drawings, and I’ve used some familiar zentangle motifs in some of the squares. But it’s different from zentangles because each square has to relate in some way to the adjoining ones – otherwise the shape of the goat won’t be clear

The goat with each square containing a different design

Over the past few days I’ve been stitching out the squares – there are 42 of them so it’s taking a while. It’s been very enjoyable, because choosing the right colours of fabrics and threads for the panel is always fun. Of course I don’t always get the colours right but if I make a mess of it, at least it’s easier to re-stitch a small square than it is to have to re-do an entire design

Rather than using “bought” quilting fabric, I’ve been using home-painted fabric for the work. Here are some examples of painted fabric that I used for the goat

Hand-painted fabric for the embroideries

and here are some of the squares embroidered on the painted fabric.

Squares embroidered on hand-painted fabric

To my eye, the uneven colours add a lot of interest to the embroidery. Made with ordinary fabric the squares would look flat and boring, but the irregularities of colour of the painted fabric should add to the complexity and appeal of the final work

The stitching-out of the squares is now mostly complete, and by next week the whole panel should be finished

The final version of the aviary panel

31 May 2011MiaFabric painting / Pieced embroideryLeave a comment

At last I’ve managed to stitch together the squares of the painted fabric aviary birds to make a panel. I posted a picture of the unpainted and unstitched panel some time ago but here it is again

The aviary panel in an unpainted, unstitched state

Those were the embroidered birds straight off the embroidery machine, with no additions at all. Since then I've added painted details and stitched the whole thing together

The finished panel, just in need of a little final topstitching

I still have to add the final smooth zig-zag stitching between the squares, but the appearance of the panel will be much the same as it is now

Some of the birds are better than others, but on the whole it’s worked pretty well. I do like the effect of the painted embroidery – it gives a little vitality to the birds and adds some interesting details which it would be unrealistic to get simply through embroidery. Looking at the finished panel, though, I really should have tried adding a few details to the backgrounds. However it isn't too late for that, as I can easily paint the fabric even when the birds are stitched together.

I'll keep on trying the fabric painting on some of my future projects. The only problem is that painting can really only be used on things that aren't going to be washed. I've tried washing painted fabric, and even though many paints are advertised as being colour-fast and "washable", I've yet to find one that really is

More painted aviary birds

3 May 2011MiaFabric painting / Pieced embroideryLeave a comment

I’ve now finished the painting of the embroidered aviary birds, for the time being at least. They still need a bit of work but I’ll wait until I put the panel together before I finish off the details. Here are before and after pictures of a few painted birds. They're not perfect but all the same you can see the difference that the painted details make

Another zentangle animal

24 April 2011MiaFabric painting / Zentangle styleLeave a comment

Here’s the second in the series of zentangle animals of the Zodiac: a yellow Taurus to go with the blue Capricorn. I’m currently working on a green Aries which with luck should be finished later this week

The zentangle bull

As usual, I've painted both the background and the applique fabric. The background motifs are stitched in thread that closely matches the background colour, so that the designs appear contoured rather than embroidered. The body is done in stronger colours to contrast with the background

An experimental lizard

17 April 2011MiaFabric painting / New approachesLeave a comment

I haven’t had time to do much work on new projects in the past week, so here’s something from the files. It’s the first time I ever tried combining fabric painting with embroidery, and I remember being surprised at how easy it was, and how effective. The paints are acrylics (not fabric paints) and they were actually much easier to use than genuine fabric paints.

The painting itself is nothing to write home about but this was strictly an experiment, and I was trying out the effect of the paint on the appliquéd fabric, on the background fabric and also on areas of embroidered stitches. The little stripes on the right side are just me trying out my brush. I quite like this little lizard so I might stitch him out again, and next time I’ll take a bit more care with the painting

My first try at painting embroidery