Making this doll - her name is Josephine and I found her in Dollmaking for the First Time by Miriam Gourley - was just an excuse to practice some different hand sewing stitches, and some embroidery that relies on stitches more than on pretty pictures.
The stitches were inspired by these books. Not much of a collection, you may think, but there are enough stitches in there to last me several lifetimes!
But my main sources of inspiration were a course on the Domestika platform by Mexican designer Garbriela Martínez of the Ofelia y Antelmo studio, and another on Craftsy by Natalie Chanin, author of The Geometry of Hand Sewing, above. She also heads her own design firm, Alabama Chanin and the School of Making.
I had already become familiar with Sashiko sewing from a couple of beginner tutorials on Creativebug and Craftsy.
I LOVE hand sewing and plan to decorate my future hats and garments with some decorative stitching.
This small project taught me a lot! First of all, cotton twill is a lousy support for embroidery! I mean, the weave is so tight I had to use pliers to pull the needle through!
Secondly, the seed stitch I used on the border of the doll's skirt is easy all right but it takes forever! So in case you’re tempted to use it as an allover pattern like on this top...
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| Copyright Ofelia y Antelmo |
...remember that the designer lives in Mexico where she employs women to do the embroidery for her!
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