Stitch Club: stitched profile

Series: Stitch Club #5

Stitch Club from TextileArtist.org
Workshop: Creating portraits in profile
Host: Lesley Wood website – Instagram
Aim: Create a portrait in profile on fabric using paint and thread.

This was one of those workshops that definitely took me outside of my comfort zone. I almost skipped this one because of the subject: I rarely do representations of people and when I do it is usually in an attempt to push my boundaries. So I watched the workshop — I always watch them even if I’m not going to complete them myself — and decided that the techniques were interesting enough to overcome “I don’t do faces”.

It took me a while to find a photo to work from. I had absolutely no suitable pictures in my own photos so I had a search on Pixabay and found this image that I thought would work nicely.

Finding the right fabric design took almost as long as finding the photo; I must have tested half of my stash before settling on this one. In the end it worked really well because the gold acted as a resist for the green fabric paint which added to the interest in the background.

With something like this — faces in particular — creating an accurate transfer and then following it as closely as possible is, for me, essential to creating the best possible outcome. Changing the shape of a curve or the angle of a line can quickly lose some of the realism of a face.

Once the design was transferred and the background painted it was time to start stitching. So much stitching. Super tiny backstitch around the outline to get as much detail as possible. Chain stitch to fill the hair band. Kind of satin stitch for the flowers, butterfly and lips. And lots of straight stitch for the hair. I started out just doing the black thread over the hair, but after finishing it and letting it sit for a day or two, I decided that it really did need something extra and I added copper metallic stitching in between the black.

Now I was happy with it and it felt properly finished. I mounted it in a display hoop and tidied up the back by stitching on a circle of felt.