Tangled Thread

part three: how to go from photo to finished art

by Chloe on February 21st, 2008

Okay, so we’ve taken our photographs,  used photo editing software to make seeing the basic composition easier… now what?

It’s time to start sketching!

The point of making a basic sketch is to give you a bare-bones idea of the basic shapes you’re using in the piece of fiber art.  It doesn’t need to be a “perfect” drawing - but it should give you the composition.

Now you’ve got some decisions to make - how is the piece going to be finished?  Are you doing a densely-embroidered piece, using machine embroidery?  Are you going to create a fiber fusion collage?  I’m going to paint onto silk duppioni and then lightly free-motion embroider over the paint as an accent.

You’ll need to transfer the sketch to your base fabric - or, you can just draw it directly onto the fabric:

I’ve used a fine-tipped black permanent marker to draw directly onto my silk (interfaced with a heavy weight fusible interfacing, for stability)  If you’re using a light colored fabric, you can use dress-maker’s transfer paper and trace directly from your sketch, onto the fabric.  If you’re using a dark colored base fabric, Sulky makes a fantastic white, iron-on transfer pen.

I’m going for a very loose, almost abstract design in this particular piece and I want the pen lines to show through.  I’m lightly painting the silk with a very fluid acrylic fabric paint called Dye-Na-Flo, that almost acts like dye when you paint it on (without all the toxic chemicals in dye :-)

I’ve placed the silk on a plastic sheet, so my paint doesn’t seep through and stain anything.  The paint has to dry overnight - so we’ll continue tomorrow :-)

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POSTED IN: Creativity, Embroidery, How To, techniques, tutorials