Visions of Fishin'

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Instructions

I knew I wanted a fish theme for this project so I chose stitches that reminded me of fish or underwater. The Wheatear stitch looked like little fish and the feather stitch looked like seaweed. I used scale couching to fill in the 2 central fish. I knew I wanted a fish theme for this project so I chose stitches that reminded me of fish or underwater. The Wheatear stitch looked like little fish and the feather stitch looked like seaweed. I used scale couching to fill in the 2 central fish.

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Category: Sewing

Type of item: Home Decor

For: Home

Style: Funky, Casual

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Materials

I used hand dyed cotton fabric. I did Shibori resist stitching and dyed the fabric blue, then I added yellow to the dye pot thinking I'd get some nice greens but the yellow really overpowered. I does add a lot of color interest as a layer under the stitching. I used plain and variegated threads for machine stitching and a variety of weights of embroidery threads and flosses for the hand stitching.

What was your inspiration?

We live at the beach and I am always inspired by how beautiful and interesting sea life is. I'm trying bring this inspiration into my home. I love hand dyeing my own fabric and blues and greens are my favorite colors to use. I wouldn't have used the red and purple if Carol Ann hadn't encouraged us to use every color but I'm so happy I did.

What are you most proud of?

The front of this pillow was so wonderful I decided it needed a special back so I made a beautiful quilted back - so beautiful in fact that I decided it should be its own pillow. So I ended up making 2 pillows from the inspiration I got from this class. This pillow now has a back from left over hand dyed fabric and a fish print on cotton.

What advice would you give someone starting this project?

One of the best things about this class is that you just jump in with very little preplanning and begin sewing. There's no need to have a formal design in mind, or to spend time agonizing over all the principles of design, or whether your idea is going to work. Instead I just got into my fabric and thread stash and started pulling out everything that caught my eye. It seemed that each line stitched was more beautiful than the one before and before long I was totally addicted.

My sewing machine is just a basic Brother EX660 with only 26 decorative stitches but it was really all I needed to be successful with this project.