Work in Progress

I have ended up with two possibilities for my entry in the Melville Art Awards.

I started with just a title: Wings. I decided to work with digital embroidery and spent some hours customising and digitising butterfly designs and images with the 4D software. It is so easy to use that I ended up with about 20 designs that could be stitched out.

I made a couple of backgrounds. Wings suggested blue skies. The first is painted felt. The second has strips of organza and wool fibres needle felted onto pale blue felt with the Pierrot embellishing machine.


While playing with digital butterflies, I customised multiple designs from an embroidery card by Margit Grimm, removing backgrounds, and positioning and overlaying the various elements. I thought I would use this as an overlay, so I stitched it out in mostly metallic threads on cream bridal tulle, using 3 layers of Vilene 541 as a stabiliser. Though there were more than 65000 stitches in the complete embroidery it worked fine. However, the darker metallic threads did not, and I spent many hours rethreading. The end result was good, but was not exactly what I had envisioned.


OK, put it to one side, stitch out some of the outlines I had digitised. The silver metallic thread worked like a dream and several designs were stitched onto pale blue organza, then the same designs were stitched onto a fabric sandwich: threads and Angelina fibres layered between 2 pieces of organza. Cut out the sandwich pieces with a soldering iron. Nice results.





Now, put it all together. Ugh! The organza dulled the backgrounds and the designs stitched on it could not be positioned in an effective way.

Back to the stitched butterflies on tulle. Could I use them if I made another background?

I rubbed Shiva sticks on to a nappy liner and ironed it onto acrylic felt. Not the result I wanted. So I zapped it with the heat gun and turned the whole bit into a sort of distressed lace. Tried some metallic fabrics behind it - copper lame looks good.


So - what piece do I take to a conclusion?

I have a workshop tomorrow, so I can't do any more till tomorrow night. Entries are due in on Saturday - deadline 5 pm. I should make it, which ever piece I decide to finish.