Sunday, January 27, 2013

Free Motion Stitching on Painted Fabric

 
'Prickly Pear'
 hand painted textile by Eileen Gidman
Unexpected things happened as this piece developed. Adding the fucshia and gold blocks into the border and allowing some clipped threads to extended into the painting were unplanned.
The Prickly Pear picture was painted with dyes onto cotton fabric. Free motion stitching was done in black thread around the cactus to provide a three dimensional effect. For the thorns I left some of the black threads long. As I was clipping threads I thought "Hey that looks like thorns!"
Thread sketching was also done around the saguaro cactus, the shrubs, the mountains and the clouds in order to tack the front painting, the 'warm and natural' batting and the backing together.  This allowed for added details such as ravines in the mountains to be stitched in.
Three of the prickly pear fruit were chosen as a focal point and they were thread painted in three hues of pink rayon thread. Also, small black beads were added to the fruit to draw attention to that area.
Often the pieces I paint are simply framed but I am thrilled with the way this turned out with the pieced border.

4 comments:

Win Dinn, Artist said...

This looks just FABULOUS, Eileen - good on you!

Laura Leeder said...

Wonderful! I love all the extra details you've added to this piece.

Kathy's A Quilter said...

love your work...I have a painted piece in my collection. I really like how you cleverly added your challenge fabric. Well done.

Jackie said...

Hi, I found you off the CQA blog.. your work is amazing! You mentioned you will be selling your work at Penticton... will you have a booth, trying to figure out how I will find you. I will be there as well.