A while ago I experimented with transparent wash-away stabilizer for embroidering on darker fabrics. These are the two designs, both inspired by Haeckel, that I embroidered on denim that I salvaged from a pair of my husband’s ripped-up jeans.
Once I decided that worked out okay, it meant I could embroider on the fantastic dark brown Japanese cotton I’ve had in my stash. I love this fabric.
This design is inspired by a plant I saw and photographed in Montana. It’s new to me, and Twitter helped me identify it as most likely Western Salsify. It’s gone to seed here, like a dandelion does.
It was all over the place when I was hiking, and I was just entranced by the delicacy of it. I thought it would be interesting to post the photo as well as the finished embroidery–you can see how I simplified, choosing to try to get the feel of it rather than get bogged down in trying to capture every detail. I also used slightly different colors.
I can get lost in detail sometimes, and I need to remind myself that what I’m trying to do, with stamps and embroidery, is distill what I like into a workable design, not try to reproduce something exactly. And that, too, is where the fun comes in–a finished design can go in so many directions depending on what decisions are made. I could come up with something completely different, still based on this flower photograph. It makes it all so much more fun.
I’m linking up with Dawn this week for make + listen, even though I only made the flower-inspired embroidery this week. As for listening, I keep landing on Indigenous while in the car. Good stuff. How about you? Do you have any new music suggestions? I’d love to hear them.