Princess T

Here’s a shirt that I made for one of my favorite little girls (other than my own), who is having a birthday party next week. It was a ton of fun. I got to use lots of tools from my kit, including applique, reverse applique, beading, embroidery and drawing. I actually drew the outline freehand, which I don’t usually do. Normally, I find an image online and manipulate it in Photoshop to get what I want. However, there were just so many Princess images online that it would have taken me days to wade through them all. Once I sat down with a pencil and paper, it was so easy that I wondered why I don’t work this way more often.

I used a bunch of fabrics that I had lying about for the image. It is a metallic synthetic, silk taffeta, necktie silk, poly tulle, and silk charmeuse. The hair is 12-strand silk embroidery floss, a glossy rayon embroidery floss, and a silver metallic floss. I used all strands, then after I tied them on I pulled the strands apart.

I find it extremely difficult to render facial features on embroidery, and I dislike almost every example of embroidered facial features that I have ever seen. An exception is the Asian embroideries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. But then again, I don’t pretend that my embroideries are museum quality. They are respectable 4-year-old birthday present quality, though.

applique detail

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