On fabric

In addition to animation, I recently tried my hand at embroidery for the first time. I decided to make a tapestry to celebrate my lovely friends Nicole and Jon getting married and extending their family.

Already parents to two adopted sausage dogs, Ouija and Rhubarb, they recently had a baby of their own, Oona. Not wanting to be human-centric (and not having the time to create more than one stencil) I decided to represent each family member with a print of a dachshund.

Each print was then given an individually embroidered dog sweater. 

Their new (fictional) family name was cut out of felted wool and stitched onto the tapestry. This process took much longer than I expected, including the entire plane ride from London to Vancouver. I'm not joking. I didn't sleep a wink.

As a process though, I absolutely love it. Embroidery is basically just drawing with thread on fabric. My design went from a fairly cold and flat digital image that looked like this. 

To something that is made softer, warmer and more personal with each unpredictable action of the hand. Although annoyingly, it is pretty damn hard to photograph in bright sunlight.

The background fabric wraps all the way around the back to create a loop at the top. This also means the whole thing can be lengthened in case more doggies or babies appear in their world. Here it is being modeled by the bride. 

And here I am modeling her actual family, minus the husband of course. That would be weird.