Diploma - Chapter 12 - Towards an Embroidered Item - Choose background-Colour background-Add detail and pattern with stitching

 For this exercise I chose a neutral coloured coton in a grey/brown tone, knowing that, at least for the first fabric I would cover most of it.

This background fabric was then covered with Bondaweb which I pealed off before layering it with different fabrics and threads.

Fabric  1

Here the background got covered with different fabrics in a stripy pattern, knowing that the surface would be cut up and that this pattern would "disappear".

The main focus definitely lies here on the blue stripe which consists of a prefelt with dry  snippets of mustardy macramée threads from another project, felted in with the embellisher from both sides

The other stripes consist of fabrics in different tones of yellow or beige. The stripes were then fixed onto the background with a hot iron. 

Stitching was added with free machine zigzag in blue in a pattern inspired by one of the shapes from the previous chapters, more straight machine stitching was added in blue and yellow as well as a "normal" zigzag stitch in a horizontal grid.

Fabric 2

For this second fabric different snippets of fabrics were layered in a random way. They consist of a beige sheer silk, scrim, grey and light brown coton, acrylic painted yellow fabric, grey painted bondaweb as well as loosely layered threads in grey and yellow. The whole background was then stitched with mostly automatic swirly patterns in grey/beige. The thread is of a thicker quality so  is a little bit raised from the surface. As a last layer some free motion stitching was added in the same blue than in Fabric 1 with the goal to create some kind of link between the 2 fabrics.

  The main goal was to create two different, contrasting surfaces that were of a different colour scheme, but linked