Totally Rad Embroidery

With my awesome portfolio site up, the embroidery section was looking pretty sparse.  Illustrations, patterns, and sewing are all mega fast compared to doing an embroidery which is why my knitting section is non-existent.  But I've been seeing so much awesome embroidery lately and I need to step up my game.  What better way to do that than to make a TOTALLY RAD embroidery (literally).  Embroidered typography is the best (fact).

First I was running low on my embroidery colors and there's nothing worse than being in the middle of an embroidery project and running out of a color.  Such a creativity killer, so I made sure to stock up!

After spending forever to wind and organize my thread (it was so worth it though) I was ready to go!

When it comes to embroidery projects, air erasing markers are my best friend.  Draw to your heart's content and the ink will just disappear over time, no wash or water necessary!  How new the pen is, how hard you press, and how many times you trace over the same line will affect on how long the ink will last.  Could be a few hours to over a week if you get too carried away!  But it will erase eventually, never fails.

Picking colors was super hard, it's difficult to imagine how the shapes of color will work together when you're done.  You just gotta go for it.

And I did my fair share of cutting and re-embroidering the mess ups and change of color decisions.  Behind the scenes secrets, shhhh!

Many hours later... Totally Rad is Totally Done! (almost)

Close-up of the R with my fancy double row split stitch.

Teeny Cat is a Totally Rad sleeper! (You can see what a mess my erasable pen lines were).

After the ink erased I mounted the fabric onto stretcher boards used to make canvases.  

The final size of it is 9 inches wide by 6 inches tall which they conveniently (sarcasm) don't have as a standard size canvas or as individual stretcher board lengths at the Utrecht by my studio (the smallest one they had was 8") so I had to do a bit of DIY magic.

I think it turned out pretty well!  And I already uploaded it as a new project to my portfolio site, go me!

It looks so fancy when you stretch an embroidery over stretcher boards.  Like professional or something. Whoa.  Can't wait to hang it on the wall!  P.S. I have more embroidery projects in the works, stay tuned!!