Happily moving along

This post has a lot of confusing technical how-to information, which is only interesting to other obsessive textile artists. But you can just skim through and see some great doily faces.

Last week you saw how images were printed on cloth, then embroidered into doily centers:

But that …just does’nt look quite right. The blue fabric is too…loose? So let’s make it more complicated. After printing the photo on paper, I can use fabric crayons to transfer the image onto felt. Then I can cut the sections apart and heat fuse them to a wool backing:

When I place the blue cloth over the felt sections, I can easily sew between the sections:

This gives me a tighter, more polished appearance. (Below) You can see the original doily, on the left, and a felt-section embroidery on the right…along with the blue scarf that perfectly matches the blue of the quilt, and which I’m cutting up:

The embroidery on that first face was too thin - it disappeared from any distance. So I took some crochet thread and some heavier cording, and colored them with watered-down acrylic. Now they match the color of the crochet, and I can use a couching stitch to hold them in the ditches between the felt sections. Then I go back and sew multiple layers of embroidery floss around the cords.

Then I realized that I didn’t have to transfer the image onto the felt - I can just print the images on white cloth, and fuse them to the felt. (Below) So, here’s some faces I harvested from the internet, with their corresponding high-contrast images on white cloth, fused to felt, cut into sections, the sections fused onto wool, then covered with blue cloth, couched with cording, and fully embroidered. By the time the faces have been through this whole process, it’s hard to identify them. I’m trying to include different ethnicities, but not many ethnic differences are discernable in the embroideries. And yes, that last face, bottom right, doesn’t match up. I have no idea……

Did I lose you in that tangle of explanation? Even I’m confused reading the process. (Below) Here’s one (pretty much) start to finish. A face, reduced to lines, printed on white cloth and fused to light blue felt.

(Belwo) I save a copy of the face on plain paper for visual guidance. The fused face is cut into sections, and each section is fused onto a wool backing.

(Below) This time, instead of cut-up scarf fabric, I’m taking pieces from the dyed quilt. I use a razor to cut the fabric away from the batting:

(Belwo) The patchwork square is laid over the felt sections, and tacked down.

(Below) The almost-finished embroidery. You can still see some of the cording waiting to be wrapped in thread. I leave loose cords to be fit into the doily.

Actually, I have a whole pile of semi-finished faces now, all with some cords awaiting wrapping, and many needing a doily. Next week will ( I hope) be an entire show of finished doily faces!

Stay well. Stay sane

Diane

a little more progress

(Below) 1. These ceramic fibula look like old ivory - at least in the hand. In photos, not so much. 2. What if I used images from buttons, or coins, with women’s faces? 3. Could I create ceramic versions, to color and wax to the same ivory-like appearance?

(Below) Well, yes, I could, but fitting them in with similarly colored crochet just didn’t work:

(Below) Then I remembered a piece that I had made long ago. In Quebec, a gallery had whalebone which had been carved by Inuit artists. The bone structure had a certain laciness, and when I got home, I stitched faces into a variety of doilies. It’s up in my storage someplace, but I’m not going to dig it out for new photos - sorry for the fuzziness.

(Below) My thought is to create new (better?) faces in doilies, which would be ivory colored and waxed. Ideally, this would make the dainty-looking threads appear stronger, as if they’d been carved, not stitched. Yeah, the original idea has definitely jumped the rails and is running down a whole new track……but I think it could work.

(Below) This old garage-sale quilt has been waiting patiently for years. With a deep dye of blue/green, it’s a perfect backing for the doilies.

(Below) Take a selfie, run it through Photoshop until it’s all lines. Harvest other photo-faces online, turn them into lines and print them on blue/green cloth. Then embroider…

Which is almost good. But - there’s a better way! More next week (I’m on a roll!).

Stay safe. Stay sane.

Diane