The Miss Mitchell doll appliqué is well underway. You can read back yesterday for a little more on this. I shared my pencil sketch yesterday and have been using the sketch as my guide. The appliqué patch is almost there. I’ve identified a few extra features to add, which I will work on today.
As suggested, yesterday, I’ve made a little photo collage of the stages involved in my make.
I’ve numbered the sequence of steps used to develop the patch. I started (1-4) by making the mini pattern for cutting the fabric used for the appliqué element. I used an iron-on fabric called bondaweb to prepare the Miss Mitchell dress for attaching/stitching to the background patch fabric. This makes the embroidery stage so much easier as the appliqué element is in place and doesn’t move around. The whole appliqué element is quite small and the sleeves of the dress are very thin, so it was important to choose the right embroidery stitch which would allow the fabric to be attached as well as looking pretty. I used a simple small Back stitch around the sleeves with a single stitch developing a stripe across the sleeve (5-7). The main part of the dress was attached using Blanket stitch.I chose to use some of my hand printed fabric for this project and I’m happy that it seems to be working well.
Miss Mitchell acquired some red legs (10) and will eventually acquire blue ballet shoes. I had thought about striping the legs (I may still do this) as in the original Miss Mitchell painting.
Until, this point ie (10), the appliqué patch was very simple. From (11-15) I worked on the head which is the most challenging part of the make. The hair seemed to be one of the most important characteristics which identifies the doll as Miss Mitchell. Miss Mitchell’s hair style makes her immediately recognisable and I was undecided for some time about the colour of her hair. Ultimately, I decided to go for a multi shaded idea with a hint of red throughout. The thread I used was striped and allowed for a random but rather dramatic hair colour. The main part of the hair was created with simple Satin stitch creating a parted line down the back of the head. The curly ‘pig tails’ used a Couching stitch to fix the curled lines on each side of the head.
That’s where I am, at the moment.
I will add a little polymer heart to the dress (another Miss Mitchell feature) and some embroidered bows to the pig tails. Initially, I did think of using some of the dress fabric for the bows. However, I’ve decided to use an embroidery stitch (16), I think the fabric bows would be almost impossible to stitch in place because of the very small size. The Stitch I’ve chosen for the bows is something called a Sheaf stitch. This stitch gives a good impression of a bow and I’ve practiced on a piece of scrap fabric to develop the right size.
I’m almost there with my appliqué patch. The extra little tasks will be completed later today and I need to decide how to finish the patch. At the moment, I’m thinking, I will add a backing layer to finish the edges of the patch. I also quite like the idea of developing some embroidery edges to the patch, so this approach will work well. I’ll wait and see what happens when the embroidered Miss Mitchell figure is complete.
Thanks for calling in today. More next week on this mini project.
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