A Walk in the Woods part 1

This is my latest piece, It was totally improvisational and you will see the process I used to make the total piece. I started with a small square of hand dyed fabric I had created last summer.

I placed the fabric in a plastic embroidery hoop so the fabric was face down and the muslin was facing me. The hoop edges are raised and the fabric is flush against the bed of the machine. Do Not put your hoop under the needle with the flat side up. I loaded embroidery cord and dyed yarns onto my bobbin and used a strong poly thread on top. I proceeded to stitch some free form tree trunks.



























As you can see in the photo above right the embroidery floss gives a lovely raised stitch. I use straight stitch only , drop the feed dogs and I also use the teflon machine quilting mat on the bed of my machine. It's fantastic. My next step was to take some silk roving, wooly yarns and threads and free motion attach them to the front of the piece. I switched the hoop so now the top fabric was facing me and the muslin backing was flush to machine bed. I used tiny pieces of angelina fibers and film too.






After this step I went to my heating tool and burned away excess areas of thread or angelina that were blocking the background fabric from shining thru. I attempted to video this so bear with me as I was holding the camera and burning at the same time. I did wear a face mask to stop fumes from getting me sick !!! Remember to use caution .

After this step I free hand stitched in a rock wall and then used Tsuknieko inks to color it in.

A landscape was pencilled in and then some Pine trees.

At this point I did some more thread play , working on the front side of the piece, adding in smaller tree branches etc. I added in some pieces of cut novelty fringe, threads and yarns to give the tree tops some more dimension. I used a quilt basting spray on the tree top area. I then sprinkled the threads and fibers on the top and used a free motion darning foot to capture the pieces . This is a great time to use up all your odd filled bobbins. If your tension is good it doesn't show and it eliminates thread waste.

I then proceeded to do more stitching and fill in areas with trees yarns etc. The Borders were attached and then pinked with a rotary cutting blade. Keep on playing remeber there is no wrong if you like it add it , if it doesn't work we camn always cover it up !!!!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of a Walk in the woods: