A little while ago I posted about The Rainbow Girl threads my mum gave me. I held on to them for quite a while, just admiring them but not daring to do anything with them. I had been thinking about doing some kind of fantasy embroidery with them, a dragon or a phoenix or something, but I just couldn't find a pattern.
A couple of days ago it struck me to have a look on Urban Threads, as they have such a variety of hand and machine embroidery patterns. I found this Baroque Punk Dragon there and fell in love with it.
I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it once I finished it last night until I saw these series of videos on fabric journals by Teesha Moore. I think once I've got all the necessary ingredients I will have a go at this.
Very pretty!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteYour Dragon is AWESOME! Seriously, Emma, he's so cool :) Definitely worth using your special thread (and what beautiful thread it is, *sigh*). Urban Threads has some very neat patterns indeed, but I've mostly seen them done on machine. Your stitching is so lovely and even! Gorgeous ;)
ReplyDeleteI watched the first video is the art journal series, and wow, she does do some funky work! I really like the way she uses large groups of buttons as decoration. Shell buttons, which she seems to use a lot, are inexpensive and dyed bright colours and have a lot of variegation so I think they'd look pretty as accents to your BPD.
I'm thinking your Dragon though is worthy of a central panel all on his own :) What if you "framed" him in fabric on the front? Maybe some dyed batik fabrics might capture the pretty colour variations? There are some really neat designs out now, like this and this and this (all from Fabric Indulgence, an online store), not just random blobs of colour, although some of those can be nice too :)
One other suggestion - I noticed at the end of the vid that TM sews small square pockets and stuffs them with polyfill. If you want a flatter more even look (which will help show off your stitching) you might want to try quilt batting. I've used it myself recently. I used to use polyfill for ornaments, but it can get kind of lumpy even if you fluff it and fluff it :) The batting is really inexpensive, and I sewed together three layers with blanket stitch for a ornament this year, and the finish was lovely and flat. Just an idea - I can't wait to see how you finish him! Am so looking forward to whatever you decide to do :)
Thanks so much!
DeleteAs soon as I watched those videos I wanted to have a go at something right away, unfortunately I don't have much supplies about at the moment, due to moving back to the UK.
The dragon is quite large, so I was thinking about framing him with fabric, and just using a white thread to quilt his panel. Those fabrics are beautiful, I think the first one you linked would go especially well with the dragon. I'm going to bookmark that website for future reference!
Batting is something I've always wanted to try and use for ornaments and such. I'll have to see how much it is compared to polyfill, because unfortunately every penny counts at the moment.
There will be another post when I get round to finishing, but it might take a few weeks (or months!).
Such a gorgeous design! I can't wait to see how you finish it :)
ReplyDeleteBest wishes.
Thank you. ^_^
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