a little stitching

I love to sew like this, using my sewing machine to draw with.  I've been wanting to sew for ages now - I go through phases in my art work, sometimes wanting to smoosh paint around in my journal, other times I fancy sitting and crocheting and others, to sit and stitch.  

My recent problem has been that I couldn't think what to sew.  After admiring some brooches over on the Hens Teeth blog I had a really good think about the images I like and remembered some blind contour drawings* I'd done of some penguins a few years ago...

... and decided to make an ATC sized fabric piece. 

I layered up some plain fabric then cut out a piece scrap painted paper to add some colour to the penguin's tummy.  I found a map scrap near my sewing machine, which I thought would make a nice base for the penguin to stand on, held it all down and stitched my penguin.

After adding the blue stitched doodling and the buttons I felt the piece still needed a bit of texture and liked the look of the chain I found in my bead box.  The bell?  I just love little silver bells :)

Thanks to Viv at Hens Teeth for the inspiration to finally get back to sewing!

*to do a blind contour drawing, you don't look at your paper as you work but look straight at what you're drawing and follow its shape all the way round.  I was introduced to this fab technique in Carla Sonheim's book 'Drawing Lab', which I would highly recommend.