These are sewn on a dismembered plastic bag from a CD retailer, couched with post it notes. Actually surprisingly fun to embroider even if fabric would have been easier.


And cause you might be interested in looking at the backs


I did these eyes to practice my stitch techniques cause I find other embroidery motifs, like flowers, pretty boring. Eyes are nice and small and they can involve many colours.

In case you're wondering about what stitches I used, they are: buttonhole stitch, scroll stitch, open chain stitch, regular chain stitch, single and double feather stitch, split stitch and running stitch. I had a go at a few french and turk's head knots but I can't DO them! All I get is a big knot in my thread, not a nice neat knot actually ON the fabric. I learned French knots in Germany and could do them then, now all I get is the thread pulls through and I don't get a knot at all I've been working from wikipedia diagrams which are a bit annoying..is there a guaranteed way to learn how to do a knotted stitch?

I hope you enjoy these eyes anyway.

Wow, thanks guys
I've had a lot of practice drawing noses, hahah..I'm much more of a drawer/painter than I am a textile artist. I only really started doing the textile stuff in 2007, and the embroidery stuff in mid/late 2008. I mean..I'd done a kit - preprinted image on some aida -  before that but nothing freehanded. Once I learned split and chain stitch it was so much easier. Hopefully I'll get a chance to do more embroidery soon.

Hahah yeah..I took the hoop off and I have the piece of fabric pinned on my pinboard, looks a little bit strange with just a piece of fabric with a face. Sort of intriguing though. Eyes are my favourite thing to embroider (I do them for colour/stitch testing instead of flowers or other such things.)

Yet another Why Did I Do This? project. I'm sure most embroiderers would have those..because embroidery takes longer than almost ANY craft ever. I am still working on my skills/stitches, but this is one that I did over TWO DAYS when I was sick.
Lots of satin stitch.

it was originally going to be a whole face but I decided to call it a day. The purple is marker that vanishes in 48 hours when exposed to air..most of it went but that little bit was behind the hoop so it didn't go.

I hope you like it.

BTW as I said, from the title, it's an embroidery of 8:29 of To Kill A Dead Man, a short film made and scored  by the trip hop band Portishead. The woman's partial face I embroidered was Beth Gibbons, the singer of Portishead. You can see the film here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4C0KHsR8Wg even if you're not a portishead fan I'd recommend it cause it's a powerful and arresting piece of film noir.

Yes my friend and I try and take interesting photos..
The prop's just a y shaped stick that I found..nothing more interesting than that! The only prop photoshoot I did was one a while ago with a crowbar (about the only thing that I could carry down the street without attracting undue suspicion!)
It's totally irrelevant but this is one of the crowbar ones

I wouldn't be able to go without my bright colours, so even if I'm going to dress in a steampunk or neo victorian fashion I have to include some colour
Glad you like it

Let's get this off to a good start!

I used ManiacalMickey's tute for the vest, great and thanks (I can't be bothered to track down the original link to the tute hahahhaa) I did a few changes, like..I did a flat seam for the outer seam..because I didn't like the way the raw edges were left exposed inside the original vest in the tute. And I made it double breasted, well..not PROPER double breasted but it looks good anyway.


The buttons are SCOTTISH HIGHLAND buttons with little thistles and stuff on them! I got them from the second hand store for $3 for 10 or something, I don't know but GOD metal buttons are SO expensive new, if I'd gotten them new they would have been $1.50 each or something.

The corduroy is this incredible corduroy I got for like...$22 a metre or something awful like that..gah..it's beautiful fabric though..it's got a pattern of roses on it. I only got a metre, that's all I could afford, so I could only make something small like a vest.


I'm also wearing a basic brown petticoat style skirt with an elastic waist that I made ages ago, and a tulle petticoat under that. You can probably imagine what it looks like, they're more "staples" rather than "interesting feature pieces" to my wardrobe.
I hope you like this all!

I can draw over thee skull..but at the moment I can't be bothered..so basically..well..at the top..those are horns, moving down the first large dark area is the eye socket, the funny squarish sticking out bit at the bottom is the teeth, the dark area near there is the nasal cavity..
Since I made the background the same as the lightest tone (big mistake!) then it's a bit..sketchy. Oh well, it was only a practice.

Yeah..so I've recently learned Fair Isle, and being me (far more of a visual artist than a textile one) I wanted to knit more than just patterns. I realise intarsia is far better for knitting pictures than Fair Isle but I can't do it yet so....

The first picture I did was a cow skull but it's kind of hard to see..oh well.

It's about 10.5cm by 13cm, it just took me a couple of hours (including drawing and gridding the image), I was practicing because I intended to do....

A KNITTED SELF PORTRAIT!
In my figure and life class at uni we had to do self portraits. naturally everyone chose to draw theirs..but I decided to knit it...I food colouring dyed heaps of rainbow colours of wool and sorted them into values.
Now I had to do a small one because I only had about 3 hrs and 45 minutes, from drawing my face from a mirror and gridding it (took 15 mins) to the final casting off.

Just in case you can't make it out, the picture is me leaning over a mirror, my scarf is covering my mouth. I knitted from the top down, turning the chart upside down (cause I wasn't sure if I'd have time to do the scarf too)
The image is blue = darkest value, red = dark mid, yellow = light mid, white = lightest tone. I sorted my wool into those values too.

Yes!  It's knitted using fairisle, but I did the fair isle pretty badly so the gods of Fair Isle would be down on me like a ton of bricks.. (hence the general warpingness of the image..)

The colour variations are because I'd pick a light tone, a dark tone, mid and light mid, and I'd change colours whenever I ran out of that colour/OR I got bored of it. I had heaps of that pale apple green but I got sick of it after a while. I also couldn't be bothered knitting the scarf hence the brown and blue bands at the bottom.
My art teacher actually liked the combobulatedness of it, the way it was "breaking away from the original regimented grid" (or something, who knows what art teachers mean, I mean as an art student I know that they just make it up. We all do.)

(Recycled food colouring dyed yarn..not sure what ply..um..8 ply? 4mm needles, it distorts a bit but roughly it's about 11.5cm wide by 18.5cm)

So yes, hopefully you like. When I have more time I'll probably do a bigger picture. This was really quite theraputic though, and it takes much less time than embroidering an image (which is what someone suggested I do instead.)

Great work! They look brill and I have NO idea how you got a natural dye to stick to turmeric..and you didn't even use a MORDANT?

Heads up on turmeric though..I've dyed with it using alum as a mordant, on wool...and it is NOT lightfast. It faded from bright bright bright yellow gold to pale buff after only an hour or two in the sun. Beautiful colour but for anything that is exposed to the sun..it's not worth it there are other natural dyes you can use that make yellow that won't fade, but they're not as readily accessable as turmeric

The yarn is Jo Sharp double knit (if I recall...8 ply 50g balls)
And the discontinued colour was Teal, and Orient
But there were no more in the yarn shop, I got the last (5 balls of teal, 6 of orient)