Eye Eye!
This week’s post is something I’ve wanted to attempt for over a year, since I went on my first free-motion embroidery course with Alison Holt. I fancied trying to stitch a picture of my cat’s eye and the summer challenge from the Chairwoman of my textile group to make something using textiles featuring animals gave me the impetus to get going with it. After overthinking the project, trying to think of the problems I might encounter, I finally just got on with it and figured I’d address them as they arose. To start, I traced the picture, added gutter to define the sections and then painted with silk paints. As you can see, the eye was dismal so here was problem one to overcome. I didn’t want to stitch the eyeball as I wanted it to have a smoother texture. I decided to cut out the eye and do it with some other media. I snipped the fabric, folded it back to the inside and then stuck the fabric down onto a sheet of self-adhesive dissolvable stabiliser...