The Making of a Free Motion Embroidery

I've wanted to stitch this David Bowie image from the cover of the his Earthling album for some time, mainly because it combines two of my heroes - Bowie himself, and Alexander McQueen who designed the coat Bowie is wearing.



I recently had a sewing day planned with some lovely friends and thought that it would be the ideal opportunity to work on this, as I knew it would take some time.

I also decided to photograph the process as I went along, so you could see how I built the image up. 

I started by tracing the photo I was using as I wasn't sure whether I would need to use my tracing as a guide to stitch through for some parts.  As it turned out, I didn't, but this is where I started. 




Normally I cut each piece within an image separately but due to the complexity of the coat I decided to cut the whole thing out in the fabric I was using for the white portions and layer up on top of that.

I used Liberty print fabrics for everything with the exception of the hair, and for the coat I used the reverse side of the fabric for a more muted effect.


I then started the painstaking task of cutting the red and blue parts of the coat out of the corresponding fabrics.  I normally cut my fabric pieces out and then apply Bondaweb to the reverse afterwards, but as these pieces were so small and fiddly I started by applying Bondaweb to the back of a whole piece of fabric, then cut the pieces out afterwards.





I did a few pieces at a time, protected them with a piece of tissue paper and then ironed them down before doing a few more.   It took quite a bit of time but was worth taking it slowly.


The sewing was actually the easy part, in most places all I had to do was follow the edges of the fabric pieces.


I had to stitch my signature!  I thought up the inside of his leg was a good, not too obvious place for it.


The last photo is courtesy of my lovely friend Angela, who's shop Crafty Angel Sewing Studio we spent the day at.

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