Machine embroidery demonstration

On Tuesday I had a wonderful time at the Quilter’s Arts Alliance meeting in Athens.  The speaker for the meeting was Mary Ann and she gave an excellent demonstration on the use of machine embroidery.

Here is one of her first pieces…….

The pattern was made from a photo of mushrooms and transformed into fabric and thread.

She demonstrated two different methods of doing machine embroidery.  The first was to do the  threadwork directly on the fabric.  She emphasized the need to stabilize the fabric very well before stitching.  In this piece, she had placed a sticky backed stabilizer in the hoop and then stuck the fabric onto the sticky side….it worked great.

The first step in doing the embroidery was to do some lines of stitching in the opposite direction to the main stitching line.  This helps to further stabilize the piece and keep the top fabric from stretching out of shape.  You can see these sideways stitches in this photo……

The second method that she showed was to sandwich a piece of netting or tulle between two pieces of heavy duty wash-out stabilizer.  Put this piece into a hoop and start making circles (or lines) to create the design that you want.   When you are finished, you cut out the embroidered design, wash out the stabilizer and attach the piece onto your picture.   The tree in this photo was done with this technique…….

I have this photo from Australia that I would love to try this technique on…….

…….guess I will add it to my “to try next” list!!!!