Wednesday, February 21, 2007



OK... so I tell lies! I said I would keep this up to date and I haven't... sorry.

Anyway I have just had an exiting weekend away learning to use my Embellisher at a class with Maggie Grey.

Embellish and Stitch

I tried so many things and had a wonderful time in the process. Great thing was,not a single needle broken.... and only one other person in the room did break one.(this is just as well as I haven't, so far, been able to undo the Allen screw on mine yet!)

1. Marbling.Build up a surface on a piece of felt with fibres of choice silk or wool or both and make sure that there are some accents. I made mine too subtle for the following process so bear this in mind.Lay a piece of chiffon over the top. It needs to be considerably larger all round than the embellished piece. Start embellishing from the centre and bunch the chiffon to make areas of darker colour.It will scruch up deliciouslyInstead of this random way try embellishing chevrons. Embellish in straight line down the centre first. Then turn and embellish another line in the opposite direction about an inch away. The chiffon will naturally make tucks which need to be encouraged. Repeat to cover the piece.

2. Embellish and puff. Make an embellished background. Take another piece of embellished fabric, made form acrylic felt and cut out shapes. heat them with a heat gun from the back to make them curl.Apply these to the background.These cut puts can also be embellished together to make vessels.

3. Use ready made needlefelt for the background and apply monotone natural fibres.

4. Appliqué pieces of FME onto a prepared backgrounds .

5. Make backgrounds with voids on them. Cut out the void and apply either FME patches and blend in the edges with the embellisher. Can also use pieces from other Embellished backgrounds in this way.

6. Try embellishing habotai silk, organza and even the metallic organzas onto a background.try transfoiling velvet and then embellishing on top.

7. All of these techniques look good combined with stitch, either hand or machine.


Here are a couple of collages of some of my samples for you to see.



3 comments:

Digitalgran said...

Lovely work Dorothy. Thanks for the report for those of us who could not get to Maggie's course.

Dorothy Gibbs said...

Thanks Margaret... hoped it would help

Unknown said...

Interesting.
Was it difficult?
I am just waiting for my embellisher machine to be delivered-haven't tried one yet!!Looking forward to having a play.