Darned Dragonfllies

It’s time for my Design Team post and recently, I’ve been experimenting with using my stamps with free-motion embroidery, thanks to a “Travelling Book” scheme in my monthly textile group, which you can read about here.

The fabric is the liner from an old wash basket and I used the Wildflower stencil as inspiration for the background grasses, which I drew with brush tip markers.

Next, I added a few flowers and dots to make the wild flower meadow.

Using black Archival Ink, I stamped the dragonflies from Brighter Days directly onto the fabric.

I then set to work embroidering the dragonflies using free-motion embroidery and raw-edge appliqué.  The feed-dogs were lowered on my machine and I put the fabric into an embroidery hoop so that it was drum tight - this stops the thread getting tangled up underneath.  I placed a piece of rainbow organza fabric over the dragonfly wings and first stitched around the edge of the wing and then wiggled around to make the veins.  (If I’d have been hand sewing, I would have skipped this step and instead embroidered French knots over the dots.)

Using small, sharp scissors, I cut away the organza close to the stitching on the outside of the wings.

For the body, I used a teal thread in the top of my machine and blue in the bobbin but tightened the tension on the upper thread so that it would pull some of the lower thread to the top of the fabric.  I first outlined the body then filled it with vertical stitches, finally zig-zagging up and down the body to add texture.

Here's a close up of a finished dragonfly.

To finish the panel, I stitched some grasses in the foreground. I'd removed the fabric from the hoop so that's why the fabric is ruched but I think it gives the impression of the ground.

This is a great way to create a unique piece of fabric that can be used to decorate a card, mounted in a frame or if your sewing skills are up to it, made into a pencil case or make-up bag.