White dog portrait created in silks, yarn and thread on dyed fabric.

After the success of the embroidered portrait earlier this year I decided to try to create an embroidered portrait of Sam, the white dog that has featured in a number of my paper artworks, and whom I painted previously in acrylic paints before, paintings which became an illustrated children’s book.

I chose a teal/ turquoise cotton fabric that I had dyed. I chose the colour as it was the colour of Sam’s favourite toy, and echoes the style of the portraits that I painted on bright bold coloured backgrounds.
I gradually built the design using hand sewing, deciding to add fluffy white yarn that was left after I knitted the jumper on jumbo needles.
I was struggling to get a likeness and lost momentum in the project so decided to inject some energy by continuing the piece on my sewing machine with a transparent foot, and also with a darning foot to use free motion embroidery techniques.
This worked and I was able to sew into the design, develop the likeness and then finished the final elements by hand. Here’s a 43 seconds short video of how the work developed.
I’m pleased with the final outcome and can now decide how best to display the work in my gallery.
Related posts which feature Sam or similar techniques are here…
Thanks so much, I hope you’ve enjoyed being here and if there’s something bespoke you’d like me to create for you then best way to contact me is to email inspirebykim@outlook.com 😊