As promised, here are some process pictures of making Can’t See the Forest for the Trees!
1) Thumbnails, compositional sketches (negative and positive space), threading samples. This took quite a chuck of time and yet it fits in such a small picture!
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full size template. I have a soft place in my heart for the incredibly helpful employee at the Downtown FedEx Office! It had been years since I had made one of the gigantic templates.
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pinning together sections of stabilizer; later I switched to a more fabric-like stabilizer (Floriani Wen N Gone Water Soluble Stabilizer) rather than this plastic type, (Sulky Super Solvy). The fabric type has much better tensile strength, which is advantageous when working on a large scale and constantly having to move the embroidery hoop around.
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Initially, I’d draw the whole section out in pencil on trace paper and then trace it with sharpie or pen onto the stabilizer. By the last couple of sections, I was confident enough to just draw straight onto the stabilizer without it planned out.
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My new (well, via Fabric Recycles, so new to me) embroidery hoop’s grand debut! I’m sewing with all Gütermann thread: 100% Natural Cotton as well as polyester lightweight bobbin thread. Unfortunately, by this point, I was very much nose to the grindstone and didn’t take any pictures of the pinning and rinsing process. Next time, next time. However, in a nutshell, after sewing, I trim the excess stabilizer, pin the section to foam (with varying degrees of pin density based on how accurate or abstract I want the image to be), and rinse it (also to a varying degree) in the sink or in the shower based on the size.
Very time-intensive work, but the end result is satisfying.
Rachelle Gardner-Roe 