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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.
