The reason for the silence on this blog is that I was spending a lot of time working on my portfolio for art school. For my application I got a list with 5 themes I needed to work on. I wanted to share a few of the things I did, because I used embroidery (something I recently got into and shared on the blog in November) for one of the pieces.

For the Theme "Preparations for a Party" I made a Thanksgiving "DIY-Kit", with a buildable Turkey and an Apron Pattern with Instructions.

Finally, Fabric! For the theme "something usual and something unusual" I chose to make two designs on fabric: Mr. Earnest Minkleton and his tea cup collection. I drew teacups, carved them out of lino and printed them onto the fabric using fabric paint. Mr. Minkleton was a little more complicated (or at least, took longer!), as I really wanted to use the embroidery to create dimension (as a contrast to the simpleness of the teacups). This meant I had to make many many little stitches, to show the direction of the fur and create soft shading. I spent about 10 hours on the head alone. I won't even start talking about the clothes! This is the piece that I finished last, I was embroidering up until 1.5 hours before the deadline.

But I'm so happy with it! The fabric got warped a bit but oh well... I finally got to use all those different fancy stitches! I used little beads for the berries and made the pussywillow from velvet that I sewed into tiny little balls. I'm glad this application gave me the chance to try such an ambitous embroidery project, I don't think I would've had the nerve to start this as a "just for me"-project. This will definitely be the "center jewel" of the cat wall (inspiration) I've been planning for years.