When I first stared doing this kind of embroidery I was a pretty clueless 21-year-old who barely knew her way around a sewing machine.
I was at art school, doing my honours year and I had chosen to focus my whole year of study on the exploration of freehand machine embroidery on water-soluble fabric.
Why did I choose that path?
I chose it quite simply because I could see so many creative possibilities in this combination of embroidery technique and base material. I saw it as a really cool way to draw and a way of creating three dimension drawings. I could create embroideries that were liberated from their base cloth.
What a great concept!
While I had set my sights on exploring (and hopefully mastering) this technique in that fateful year, I’ll admit that I really had no idea what I was doing when I started. I didn’t have anyone to learn from. There was no one at my art school that did this kind of work. No tutor to guide me. I was pretty much on my own to fumble through and find my own way.
So I launched in.
I dragged a (very old) sewing machine from the back of the university storage room, dusted off a few embroidery hoops and started sewing.
I was pretty bad at it to start with. But after a few days of stitching away in the studio I started to find a good rhythm and get a feel for this kind of stitching. I spent longer than I like to admit stitching my first piece. It was a soft white and pink design based on a dye painting I had created the year before. I was so excited to dissolve the piece after stitching it all week.
But, when I finally dissolved it I realised that I had made a huge mistake.
A mistake that pretty much destroyed the piece.
I had drawn some guiding outlines of my design with a blue biro pen. This pen was what I had lying around at the time and I didn’t think much of it when I used it. My pen marks were completely covered by the dense stitching of the piece so I didn’t think it would matter what colour pen I had used to trace out my design onto the water-soluble fabric.
Boy was I wrong.
As soon as I dipped the piece into the dissolving basin that bright blue ink started leaching out and staining my beautiful pink and white thread! Whoops.
Needless to say, I didn’t use that pen again. Lesson learnt.
Or so I had thought.
At that point I should have then researched and tested a bunch of pens/markers/chalks on small embroidery samples. That is what I would have done today. But, at that time, I was too impatient and caught up in playing and making things. I was also a poor student who didn’t like buying things, so I kept working with what tools and materials I had on hand.
I started to sketch my designs onto the water-soluble fabric with lead pencil. That made sense to me at the time. I was sketching my design on paper first with a pencil so it was a natural transition to also sketch with pencil on the water-soluble fabric. I used the pencil really lightly, just leaving a few marks in key places to guide my embroidery. I though I had nailed it, so away I went.
For a while my pencil drawings were working fine. I made a bunch of samples from coloured threads that didn’t have any staining when I dissolved then. I started to develop ways to shape and mould the embroideries and was getting really excited about a large hanging piece I had designed to be my major work for the final year exhibition.
I then stitched that large piece. It was made entirely from white, and off white threads and had hundreds of long trailing threads hanging from it. It took me weeks and weeks to stitch and I was so happy with it.
Until I dissolved the base fabric away.
And, you guessed it. The lead pencil stained my beautiful white threads and my whole piece looked grubby and dirty as a result. What a bummer.
Since then I have been on a mission to find the perfect pen or marker to use with this style of embroidery. I have tested pretty much everything I could get my hands on and I am yet to find the perfect marker for every project and thread colour (to be honest, I don’t think it exists).
But I have gotten pretty close.
I will share what pens I like to use with you in just a minute. But first, I want to explain why I have told you this somewhat embarrassing story about my early learning days as an embroiderer.
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When we start something new we are bound to make mistakes. I sure made a bunch of them when I started working with this kind of embroidery. My first attempts at this kind of embroidery fell apart, distorted and shrivelled up. I know I am not alone in these kinds of experiences. These ‘failures’ seem to happen to many who try these techniques out for the first time. Water-soluble fabric can be a challenging material to work with.
Mistakes can form important learning lessons and they can push us into new and exciting directions. My own journey of mistakes, experiments and discovery have laid the groundwork for how I work today. So in many ways I am grateful for my mistakes and misadventures in that first year.
But it took me a long time to get to where I am today and I wasted loads of materials in the process. I often wonder what my embroidery journey would have been like if I had had someone to learn from in the beginning. I likely would have saved myself loads of time, money and heartache.
This is one of the reasons why I teach my embroidery techniques today.
I know others can benefit from what I have learnt during my years of trial and error. I know I can help streamline the art-making journey of my students. I can get them started off on the right foot, hopefully saving them loads of time, money and heartache in the process.
I have taught my unique ways of working for almost a decade now via in-person workshops. I have only recently moved into teaching online and I am really excited about it.
In my ‘Sculptural Embroidery’ online course I am sharing all of my knowledge and insights into this embroidery technique. I am passing on my knowledge and my unique ways of working. Sharing the tips, tricks and systems that I have developed over my art career.
I have essentially created the course that I wish was around when I first started exploring this style of embroidery. It would have saved me so much time, money and a lot of useless fabric markers.
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And, since we are back to the topic of fabric markers. Let me share what I use to draw on my water-soluble fabric today.
I now draw my guidelines on water-soluble fabrics with heat erasable pens. FriXion pens (made by Pilot) are my favourite. These pens were first designed for use with Sudoku puzzles. They are markers that can be erased from paper by rubbing out the pen marks with the little plastic nub on the back or the pen, much like the classic lead pencil eraser. I love these pens because I can draw a design onto my fabric, stitch my embroidery and then blast the whole piece with a hot hair dryer at the end to make the pen colour fade away. It’s pretty cool.
These pens do have some issues and things that you need to be aware (all of which I discuss at length in my online course) but they are the best option I have come across so far for drawing on water-soluble fabric. They are also really affordable (about $4 a pen) and they are readily available (you can pick them up from your local newsagent).
If you are keen to learn from my mistakes and shortcut your own creative journey with the freehand embroidery technique on water-soluble fabric I hope you will join me in my ‘Sculptural Embroidery’ online course.
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