Tea Towel Tour Gallery - As seen on TTTV

[rectangel]

Post 'em when you got'em

This is my design for my tea towel -you may recognize her from many sources as she is based on some old flash I've seen in various places but most recently BrookeOwens did a couple of versions of her.  This is my take on it -the image I used was from about 2 years ago when someone posted her as a "thanks for the add" on a myspace account I had  I searched for a source and she is a lot like a tattoo from a X-files episode but in the end I couldn't find the source and since I had seen it reused on so many things (shrinky dink necklaces, stationery) I decided it was fair game.

It took a lot to get her to embroiderable state and redraw a line drawing for this.  I wanted to make it my own and practice some stitches.  I had to get a bunch of pictures of girls looking over their shoulder because I keep thinking it looked like she had a broken neck and her eyes were crooked.  I even took a picture of myself to see if the pose was plausible and where the irises of the eyes should be...I love Hank Williams and so I thought this was very apron appropriate...I drew the banner myself and which leads me to mention that if you write text out in a drawing always leave lots of space between the letters because embroidery letters are always somehow puffier.

For the first time ever I documented my transfer process because when I work on something so small and detailed I can't use my transfer pen and have to use carbon paper.  The pictures are on my other camera though so that will have to wait.  Happy Monday!

[Lilyvanilli]

She's beautiful! I love her eyes and all the different shades in the banner.

[greenlightgo]

Wow that really is stunning! Great job! She's flawless!

[sarahj2001]

Wow, it's beautiful... I'm insired now to get working on mine.

[Beetastic]

She is beautiful. I love her hair.  I would love to see your process on how you transfer such fine details.  I always smudge my carbon paper.  I believe it is user error on my part. 

I can not wait to see what everyone ends up doing.

[rectangel]

thanks everyone I really love her...she's over on flickr now so you can see the details if you are interested.

carbon is annoying but I get so much finer lines from it that I can't find anything better - I do extenstively sketch over top of my carbon outline with my water erase and air erase pens though when I'm unhappy with a line - recently I realized that if I keep my designs in the 4 by 4 inch range I can do a lot more filling in and that has turned out to be really fun.  In the past I would have blown this up so I could be more free with the outline but this way it looks much more finished.  generally I like working with 3 or 4 strands but this mostly all 2 strand and no more than 3.

[Tularosa]

Totally gorgeous! When I saw the picture at first I thought it was going to be a tribute to Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara. 

[SugarySweet]

She is gorgeous! I love her hair and bow. Her eyes look amazing.

[GatsbyGirl]

Way to set the bar high rectangel!

I agree, the detail is marvelous and I'm blown away at how you managed to be so precise with the eyes.

[ritapizza]

oh, rectangel, she's stunning! her eyes are absolutely gorgeous! you packed so much amazing detail here! I love her hair bow too! WOW! ok, now I'm redrafting what I'm stitching for my apron (yup, I'm going with an apron too!)