Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Big Hair

This pillow was an collaborative artistic project with my 4 year old son Kolya... His drawings are so much fun and I have had the idea to embroider some of them for a while. Kolya said this character had "big hair" like me. Now, I have consulted some very reliable sources and it has been confirmed that I do NOT have big hair. (Just had to make sure...)



If you want to make a similar project, I have used a natural linen as my background fabric and a patterned cotton for the back of the pillow. I picked up the down pillow form at IKEA, but most fabric stores carry a stock of pillow forms. You can even re-purpose a pillow that no longer works with your decor. I then took a photograph of Kolya's drawing (so that I could re-size it)... reversed the image... and printed it. I used tracing paper and traced over the drawing with a heat transfer pencil. I then ironed the design onto my linen. I pulled out a nice palette of embroidery thread and went to work. I used the chain stitch in 6 strands on the hair and the stem stitch for the rest of the design. I used just 2 strands of embroidery thread for the more intricate squiggles.

This pillow was a gift, but I'm going to whip up a few more for our house...

5 comments:

marzi said...

i love this too! i also have a 4 year old and think this would be a great gift for the grandparents for christmas! i better get going! ;)

Karen June said...

Marzi... this was a REALLY big hit with the grandparents and it was fun to do a "collaborative piece" with my son. :)

Anonymous said...

thanks for your comment on cjane....i felt like a couple of people were abusing others' kindness. you could do a quilt with all the grandkids drawings for christmas....you are brilliant!

Anonymous said...

I just love your work Karen. You are so creative and talented and a big fan.

Morgen said...

Karen, your creativity inspires me! Thanks for sharing your great work with us.