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Embroidered Self Portraits

By Stef | January 8, 2010

Over these past months, I have discovered that I really enjoy embroidery. I couldn’t figure out what to embroider, so I decided that self portraits would make a nice subject.

This is an embroidered picture of me with a bee buzzing around my head.  I have one of those brains that doesn’t shut off when it should.  Leads to a lot of insomnia - Keith calls it my head full of bees.  I think of it as my hamster wheel brain (hmm…maybe that’s the subject of my next embroidery).

At any rate, this is an embellished self portrait.  I traced the picture of me that we used for this website and made a rough pencil sketch directly on the fabric.  Embroidery followed.

stef-self-portrait-embroidery-with-bee

The next self portrait was a different experiment.  Keith helped me to drop a picture to black & white.  I printed this onto fabric and began embroidering.  The challenge here was to create different textures using one color.  The background is two shades of green blended together on the vertical trees and the darker shade used alone for the horizontal background. 

stef-and-keith-embroidery

stef-and-keith-embroidery-close-up

I am looking forward to exploring this technique in more detail.  I’m still trying to decide what to embroider…hopefully inspiration will strike soon.  If not, then it will probably be a hamster in a wheel.

Topics: Fiber |

3 Responses to “Embroidered Self Portraits”

  1. Laura Jones Says:
    January 8th, 2010 at 12:26 pm

    I really like these! Especially the one done from the photo…what a terrific idea!! I have the same problem of figuring out what to embroider.

  2. Lee Says:
    January 8th, 2010 at 2:09 pm

    I was going to tease you about never posting yesterday when I linked to you, and then here you are: two posts in a row!

    Very cool techniques — I especially like the texture in the scarf.

  3. Keith Says:
    January 9th, 2010 at 2:18 pm

    I’d love to take credit for the bee comment but I can’t. Unfortunately I also can’t remember where I picked it up :-/

    There’s just something so perfect about the meandering path the bee is taking - I really love that one…

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