Tuesday, November 11, 2008

From my child's hand to mine

As I wrote before, I have never tried to embroider until I signed up for the Stitcher's Angel Swap. With all the cute patterns Hugs from Helen was providing for us with the help of other designers how could I resist trying my hand at it? So I did it and even if I wasn't so good, I enjoyed it. And now I've been bitten by the embroidery bug, especially if I can combine the pieces with patch working! (my favorite thing!) Helena at Syverkstan is a real inspiration to me! However....why should I recreate other people's designs when I have a fine designer of my own living under the same roof? I just loved this drawing of Maya's princess with the unicorn! So I made a copy of it so that I could trace over her lines with a Sharpie pen, then trace again onto fabric with a pencil. Maya helped me decide which colors to use for each part and she drew the fall leaves directly on the fabric with a pencil. This will be for her Farmor (= father's mother = Bo's mom = grandmother) and I'll use the same autumn leaf fabric I used for my Stitcher's Angel armchair caddy to make one for my m-i-l. sh....don't tell her. Maya designed the other pocket directly on to the fabric once she realized what I was doing...and she also designed the little pin cushion piece. I will post the finished project later. It's still WIP!
Here's another Maya design that I'm working on....it's for Mormor (mother's mother = my mom = grandmother). Hopefully she isn't looking at my blog so often and she'll miss this post! (Otherwise, Mom pretend you don't see this!) I won't tell more about this just in case Polly is reading! But I can tell you that Maya has such good ideas! It won't be long before Maya will be embroidering her own creations! In the meantime, I'll put some of her delightful drawings into fabric form!

Please give me some help....
Sew-Amy says she uses "crayon color" (?) to fill in color on the fabric. How do I do that?

And if anyone can give me helpful hints about embroidering with METALLIC dmc thread. I had a heck of a time with it doing the princess's crown.

Lori's Art and Play suggested that I do appliques from Maya's work...want to try that too. But can't do that while watching kid movies with Maya! ;-)

Does anyone else have an idea about how to add a child's artwork into sewing creations!? Please share with me! Or tell me which blog to look at!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think your embroidery is Fantastic. I love how you took Maya's unicorn design and did it. I need one now to go with my unicorn collection!! Keep up the amazing work!

Anonymous said...

Yeah - I can finally help!!

The colours you use for colouring on fabric are PRANG brand because they have no oil and the colours won't bleed. If you post an e-mail I will contact you and send you a pack. I took a colouring course with my 7 year old Natalie in September and we both loved it. The whole course was about embroidery and accenting it with colouring. My local shop is called "The Hobby Horse" in Georgetown Ontario Canada.

Also, a great way to incorporate Maya's artwork onto fabric is to use transfer paper onto fabric. Fabric stores and some stationary stores sell the either the iron on "T-shirt" transfers or the fabric that you can print right on from your your printer...just scan the artwork and then print it.

Please let me know if you need more details.

Gail

Anonymous said...

Wow, Carol, that's awesome! I'm so impressed, both with your daughter's designs and your embriodery skills! Fantastic!

I've never done embroidery, so have no tips to share on that, but... as already suggested, one easy way to transfer the drawings to fabrics (in color!) would of course be to scan them and then print them on fabric, using an ink-jet printer. Either you can iron the fabric onto freezer paper to make it go through your printer, or buy pre-treated fabric ready to print on. (I've also tried the T-shirt iron-on transfres, and they work great, but the fabric gets quite stiff so if you want something soft and/or wearable I think printing directly on fabric is to be prefered.)

You could make a number of big squares with her prints, add strips around them in many different "crayon colors" and then add a solid sashing between them. It would make a great and easy quilt in my view, and a great way to showcase her art :-)

Sara said...

Those are great embroideries. I am sure Maya loves seeing her artwork displayed like that. I can't help you out though - I have never done embroidery.

Anonymous said...

Hello!
I am not sure if this is any help, but I am doing the same with some cute drawings of my son. There is a picture of them on my blog (11.10, one picture is still missing) and the fabric I will use to sew them together. I think the pictures are so cute there`s no need of much design around. I will stich them in a bright blue and probably colour them with colour pens. And then it will become a wallhanging that lasts forever.

Sabine

Anonymous said...

Great Idea for your embroideries!! They look great! I have done the coloring on fabric and it works great. You have to do the coloring before you stitch around the design. Just iron some freezer paper to the back of your stitchery after you have traced the main design with pencil. Then color it with crayons. Put a paper towel on the ironing board and set the color by putting the stitchery face down on the paper towel. Iron the stitchery over the freezer paper for a couple seconds. Then peel off the freezer paper and you have color set your stitchery. Now you are ready to stitch around the design to outline it. Hope this helps.

Natalie Harris said...

OKAY...I am enchanted!!! What a DARLING, LOVE REMEMBERING idea!!!I'm going to have my nieces start drawing for me the second they get here. You amaze me!And WHEN do you DO all of this stuff? Talk about me not sleeping!!!
Natalie

Anonymous said...

Oh what a fabulous idea. You are both very creative. I love it. It will be cherished forever, I am sure.

Carol in Sweden said...

THANKS for all your ideas and comments!

I'll post the finished projects later so you can see how they turn out!
Next time around I'll try some of the ideas you all have given me for the coloring in and scanned transfers...

Oh...maybe Santa will bring me a scanner for Christmas! (I swore I never wanted another gift with an electric plug....but if it can be used for sewing projects...that's different!)

Unknown said...

Så duktig du är! Och Maya också!
Min mamma har broderat både mina, min systers och mina barns teckningar. En del har hon ramat in som tavlor och en del har hon bara sytt en enkel tygkant på som matchar. De är jättefina.
Inte för att du verkar behöva så mycket hjälp.....men du är välkommen att hälsa på mig!

Brenda said...

Grand idea! Your stitching looks great. Since Maya is such a wonderful artist you will always have special patterns to work with.