Tropical Storm through a marble - machine embroidery

 Life through a marble series

Freehand Machine Embroidery & Quilting Technique.

This photograph (below) was taking in Vilamoura in Portugal in 2016.

 

We were sitting in a deserted beach bar, just two of us as the weather was starting to turn from a lovely bright sunny day, into a chilly, windy evening. 

There was a storm brewing, so we decided to wrap up as warm as we could with our limited holiday clothing, and watch the clouds do their thing.

It was a perfect opportunity to take a photo of the changing light through a marble, resting on the edge of the beach bars fence.

Whilst sitting there I decided to mess about with filters on my iphone, seeing what I could do with the colours and after trying a few I ended up with this colourwash of hues. 

A complete contrast to the dark grey and black that was starting to roll in.

This adapted photo was to be my inspiration for my freehand embroidery piece called “Tropical Storm through a marble”.

I started off with some wadding  (leftover insulation packaging from a food delivery box – made from recycled plastic bottles) and some cream cotton to cover it in.

All of the materials used for this piece have been saved and reclaimed from other projects.

To decide what colours to use, I squinted at the photo, trying just to see the blocks of colours, then pulled the matching fabric out of my stash box and laid it on top of the wadding.

I used a tin bucket to draw around for the ‘marble’ and reversed the fabric selection within that space to show inversion.

I chose a ‘wine’ themed fabric for the actual bar, as I felt it gave a nod to the fact that I was in a bar, having a drink, even though that cannot be seen from the images.

Next job was to use the sewing machine and ‘scribble’ all over the fabrics.

I did this by changing the foot on my machine to an embroidery foot and dropped the ‘feed-dogs’ which meant I could move the needle about freely and not have to work in straight lines.

I looked more closely at the initial image and picked out more subtle colours to do my ‘painting with thread’ with.  I simple drew patterns with my sewing machine until I has added colour to the areas that I thought needed it.

Once it was done  (many, many hours of scribbling) I trimmed off the edges to make it nice and neat.

I then measured a piece of PVC table covering to create a disc the same size as the marble section, and I sewed it in place. 

I though this might give it an extra layer of texture and shine to replicate that the original photo was a marble.

Finally I added a black border to finish it off neatly, hide any stray threads and create a framework around it.

 

Looking at the finished piece I feel it is quite ‘blocky’.

On reflection, maybe I should have tried to blend the fabric colours together better, creating softer lines between them.  Smaller pieces of fabric would have been trickier to sew in this manner, but might have created a better colour flow.