Marie Antonette Embroidered Picture

Doing two Altrusa trees this year has meant a lot of planning and starting early on the decorations and gifts.  So far I have volunteered for several decorations but I am not sure what gifts I could make.  The thing I like about our groups tree is that we don't throw money at them.  We make almost all of the stuff ourselves.  Some members do donate money for the supplies to make things, which is very generous.  We also get things from thrift stores and fix up.  One gift idea that I've had was a pair of crystal earrings.  I bought 2 large pink crystals that will be used to dangle large woven gold drops.  The crystals will made into cabochons sew in with gold or pearl beads, haven't made my mind up yet!  That is as far as I've gotten making gifts!

Last night I was looking at a friends pintrest page, http://pinterest.com/lindageorgeadis/marie-antoinette/ , and came across a lovely picture of Marie Antoinette and decided to embroider the picture as a gift.  I could have turned the image into a cross-stitch or needlepoint.   But instead I printed the image on cotton canvas and started embroidering sections to bring out the image.

Original printed image of Marie Antoinette onto cotton canvas.

When starting this kind of project deciding what to do first can be daunting.  So I took one thread of gray DMC and started embroidering straight stitches to add detail to the feathers in her hat.  This gave me the courage to keep working.  Besides all of the thread and color challenges there is also the challenge of getting the needle through the fabric.  The fabric is a commercially processed sheet that can go through a printer.  The fabric is very thick and besides bending several needles I also bruised my fingers when the eye end went into my fingers because the point end would not go through the fabric.

  Feather enhanced by straight stitches in grey DMC thread

and variegated silk ribbon added to the hair.

This style of embroidery is completely different from the more standard embroidery forms.  Unlike embroidery patterns whether to leave something plain or stitching to enhance a section is entirely up to the embroiderer.  The most helpful thing is to have a wide variety of embroidery supplies.  In this piece I have used silk sewing threads and ribbon, DMC floss, silver passing, crewel and needlepoint fibers.  In the above picture the feathers are enhanced by straight stitches in grey DMC thread

and variegated silk ribbon added to the hair.  On the right hand side of her neck bullion knots in dark gray DMC were added.  The darker shaded hair and smaller stitches make her hair recede into the background.  The color of gray was similar to the artists choice of color.

Curls added to the left neck area using crewel acrylic yarn in pale gray

and seed pearls added to form the necklace.

After enhancing the feathers I had thought to leave the hair simple with a few silver stitches.  But the curls were so tempting!  So I used a white acrylic crewel yarn and a silver crewel yarn and formed them into loops.  Then the loops were tacked down on top of the hair.

How to Make the Loops.

The loops were very easy to make!

Step 1:  Thread a needle with a strong thread matching the color of the curls, I used silk sewing thread.  Hold the thread along a dowel and wrap the hair fiber around the dowel and thread.

Wrapping the hair fiber around a dowel and encasing a sewing thread.

Step 2:

Once the loops are as long as you want for one area, sew through the hair fiber with the encased sewing thread.    Make sure to pierce through the actual hair fiber as you sew.  Keep sewing through until all the loops are sewn loosely together.

Sewing through the hair fiber.

Step 3: 

Sew the fibers through again going in the opposite direction.  Tie a small knot at the end of the loop with the sewing thread.  Be careful not to pull to tight.

Sew back through the hair fibers, do not tighten to much.  The loops should be sewn close together.

Step 4: 

Slip the hair fiber loops off the skewer and sew in place using the same sewing thread.



Finished hair loops ready to be sewn into place.

Loops starting to form hair on left side of head.

Bullion knots form tighter curls on right side of head.

Hair added to left hand side of head is made with darker variegated crewel fibers and is formed by making bullion knots.  This forms tighter curls which gives the impression that right side of her face is turned away slightly.  This is a simple trick to form depth to the picture.

Silver passing is used to give detail to the lace edge.

The last thing that I did last night was to start enhancing the lace on her dress with silver passing thread.  This was a bit tricky because after so much work I was afraid that the silver thread wouldn't work and I would have ruined the embroidery.  But it came out fine!  I used short lengths of silver thread and straight stitches.  I worked the silver following the white edge in the lace.

View of dress after silver passing was added to the lace.

Some of the bullions knots on her right side are a bit dark and I may do them over again.  The bouquet in her hand has stems and leaves but I still need to figure out how to make the rose.  The next big step is embroidering the background.  The trick is to make the background interesting and at the same time not so detailed that it is to busy.  Now to try and not destroy the picture today by doing something stupid!