25 March 2009

Tree Embroidery

Things have been very busy around here!  We've been looking at houses.  To buy.  And we're planning a wedding.  And we have two out-of-town weddings to attend in April!  Oh my oh my!

I've made this for Scott and Kristen's wedding in Austin next week:

embroidered tree stump

It's supposed to look like a tree stump.  I embroidered it with a variety of stitches and number of threads.  The fabric is a double layer of cheap-o muslin.  I was thinking about tea-dying the whole thing but have decided not to.

DSC_0089

I think the backs of embroideries always look so nice, if not better, than the fronts.  I've tried to capture the "back" look on the front but it just can't be done.  It's one of those things that you can't think about too much.  I believe Joetta Maue achieved the "back" look for a piece by embroidering her design from the back of the fabric, so that the front was the back.

DSC_0097

I wanted to create a tag for the stump that looked like a specimen tag, like Jessica Polka's crocheted pieces.

I also want to point out the finished edge of the fabric.  I never know how to secure the fabric to the embroidery hoop that's being used as a frame.  It's hard to glue the fabric to the frame and time consuming and messy to stitch it together.  So for this piece, I trimmed the edge of the fabric while it was in the hoop, so that the fabric was right at the edge of the hoop.  Then I sewed some stretchy lace seam binding along the edge, and glued this to the inside of the hoop.  The seam binding is much more flexible and cooperative than the fabric, so it looks neat.  And it was easy!

No comments:

Post a Comment