My theme revolves around combining the skills I have learnt on my foundation year in Textiles and Illustration to create an animation entirely out of embroidery with the subject being my own cat, Milo. For this reason, my project is called ‘Crafty Critters’, crafty for the medium used and critters as my focus was on animals. I loved combining textiles with illustration as I think it lends itself well to creating simple animal drawings but adds depth via the types of stitches chosen to use.
The animation itself was first created digitally to plan it out and screen-printed onto fabric to ensure each frame is the same size. After the print was finished, I moved on to free-hand machine embroidering each frame. Once done, I photographed the fabric as a whole and used photoshop to separate the individual frames and turn them into an animation. I used free-hand machine embroidery for the animation rather than hand embroidery as I liked how quickly it worked up in comparison and it created a good fur texture.
The individual illustrations were made using hand embroidery techniques so that I could show the difference between hand embroidery and machine embroidery and the array of textures made with different stitches and thread. I created these to represent his character, showing his personality and what he likes to do – for example, one depicts him holding a feather as he likes to collect feathers to play with.
I used few colours in this body of work as the subject is primarily a black cat with the only colour being his blue collar in the hand embroideries – but I think this helps to highlight my subject as his black fur contrasts with the white of the fabric and the blue collar directs your attention to his face.
