I've got something completely different to share with you this week! I went with my Mum and Auntie to an Embroiderer's Guild Workshop by Mary Anderson on how to sew miniature embroidered portraits.
The ones we were shown as examples look rather like the little portraits you would expect to find in a Victorian house, people dressed up to the nines wearing hats with feathers and hair in ringlets. They incorporated little scraps of fabric, beads, sequins and feathers to build up a lovely textured piece, which looked really effective.
The Embroiderer's Guild blog which Mum updates should hopefully have a few photos of the examples and everybody else's work. It's amazing how we all had the same brief, but we were well on the way to creating some very different portraits.
Mary suggested that if we didn't want to use our imaginations, we could base our portrait on someone in particular. Mum and I decided to embroider each other!
As Mum was sat at an angle to me, mine is in profile. As you can see, I have a little way to go before I'm finished.
I'm hoping that when I add the hair she will look a little more feminine!
I'm looking forward to getting it finished! I think I'll use some scraps of material for Mum's top, and more stitching for her hair. I might add a few other embellishments too.
Speaking of scraps of material, I came away from my Auntie's house with a whole bag of offcuts of all different shapes and colours. She stitches beautiful quilts, incorporating a lot of texture and different techniques. You can see examples of her amazing work on her website - Lime Green Lizzie.
Look at all these lovely colours, just waiting to be stitched up into something fabulous!
Again, speaking of left over scraps, I have a chicken boiling down ready to be made into soup which I must attend to! Have a lovely week everybody, hope to see you back here next Sunday!
I've linked up to this post on the following blogs: Craft-O-Maniac, Lamb Around and Handmade Harbour.Labels: embroidered portrait, embroidery, embroidery workshop, fabric scraps, Mary Anderson, miniature portrait, portrait embroidery
