16 September 2010

color your world

In the premiere issue of Amy Powers' Inspired Ideas, Piper Wise shows how to add color to embroidery, a technique she learned from her husband's aunt. She uses the duck design from my Party Animals pattern to create a motif on a little girls dress.

You may have seen some of the vintage Vogart stamped-for-embroidery projects with colored areas already printed within the design. Here are a few examples:

flower girl

serenade

Using Piper's technique you can mimic this effect yourself. Another way to add color is to use acrylic paints. Acrylic paints are plastic-based so the paint fuses with the fabric and becomes water-resistant when dry. The nice thing about acrylics is that you can dilute them with water if you want a softer, more watercolor-like effect.

Generally, with stamped embroidery projects, you embroider the outlines of shapes; adding color helps to fill in some of the empty spaces in your design.

5 comments:

Piper said...

Thanks again for use of the darling pattern Janet!
I remember those stamped designs!
I also remember my mom using Tri-Chem paints to color in as well. Remember those?

This was a really fun project, wasn't it?

janet said...

I do remember Tri-Chem although it always seemed like cheating to me :)

Yes, it was a fun project and the result is really gorgeous!

donna!ee said...

you were missed...i was just thrilled to see your blog wasn't removed...i count on access to your stitch tutorials every day... love love love learning from the best! ;)

janet said...

Thanks Donna. I don't think it's in any danger of being removed. Even when I don't post for a while I still get lots of comments and that keeps it active.

Loralynn said...

Thanks for the link! Great publication, I love all the different ideas in it!