MODULE 1 - CHAPTER 8

COMPLEX SAMPLES

1. The machine embroidery I did in a hoop, but there is still a little buckling

2. I really like the simplicity of this and I think that doing the machine embroidery following the interior of the design is quite effective.

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3. Next time I will do a double line of stitching, not cut so close to the stitching and use less stuffing material. I burst the seams with the over stuffing and had to do some repairing of the burst seams.  I like the general design though, using the same shape, once with stitching and then using trapunto for the other shape.

4. This time I used two similar but different shapes in machine embroidery and then bonded the top silk layer.   

5. I tried some more trapunto, this time I used much less stuffing and mostly used it in the main areas, the smaller areas were quite a bit more tricky to manouver.  There was some residual wonder under on the silk, so took some separating to make that work, resulting in cutting through the top layer.  So many things to think of.  The design on the bottom could have been slightly larger and the top design could have been better centred

6. This time I wanted to see how it would work with just layers of machine embroidery and whether it would be enough to show that there are different layers.  I think it worked quite well.  Either more or less dense machine embroidery would change the effect.

MODULE 1 - Chapter 7

TRANSLATING THE LAYERED DESIGNS INTO EMBROIDERY

I really enjoyed the process of layering the designs and I love hand stitching and the meditative aspect of hand stitching.  But by the time I had come to the sixth piece and basically the 11th layer of stitching and countless hours that entailed - I really enjoyed machine stitching the last four layers! I also enjoyed playing around with the same two colours of red and green, but using different shades and different qualities of translucency.  Lots of opportunities for play.

 I will rewrite the comments as they are a bit hard to read on the pictures)

1) Simple running stitch.  Organza frayed easily.  I tried to use that to advantage and frayed back to stitching

2) The first layer was silk and frayed quite easily.  I used double row of stitching on the top layer

3) I liked the simplicity of this sample.  Using the opposite colours for the stitching was quite effective

4) This time I used Wonder Under on the organza to stop the fraying

5) I used more complex stitching.  The second layer was silk and next time I would use Wonder Under to make it more stable.  I think also I would limit the extra stitching to the top layer as I think the two layers compete too much.  The first layer with only one row of running stitch looks better and the focus would be the top layer, which was intended

6) Four layers.  The first layer used the negative shape. Second layer did not have Wonder Under and is much more translucent than third layer, which did.  I like that the stamping showed up a little better on third by doing that.  Using the sewing machine certainly sped things up!  I think the simple machine stitching worked well with so many layers.  If I had used colourful or heavier embroidery thread, I think the whole piece would have been overwhelmed, even if I had only embroidered the top layer.  I think the colours and fabrics were able to speak for themselves.