HAND SEWING AND ZEN

Quite some time ago I was introduced to a designer that I fell in love with. Her name is Natalie Chanin and her designer label is Alabama Chanin and you can see her stuff here. All of her designs are stitched by hand and are made of cotton knit.

After a couple of  small practice pieces made from colored

t-shirts.......

Headband

Unfinished headband

Scarf

I was ready to go whole hog and make something substantial.  The first thing I did was gather up all the white tees that Bob had gotten from giving blood but had some sort of emblem on front and back...I dyed them using a combination of orange and brown and ended up with a pretty nice type batch of tees. 

All the items are made with two layers of knit so I had to cut off the parts I didn't want to use for the outside layer and hope the inside with the emblem on it worked out okay. I am doing a type of reverse applique but leaving the edges raw.

I love the design of sunflowers called "Angie's Fall"...

I used a stencil and traced around the design using a red fabric marker with disappearing ink...

Here are the results of the first part of the design stenciled and stitched and cut

A little more is stitched and trimmed and the sunflower is starting to become visible.




 

A little more of the design is finished






After getting the whole section of stitching done I decided to make it into a tunic.

Tunic front

Now the hard part begins. Trying to come up with enough fabric to do two layers with none of the printed emblems showing through to the outside layer. As you can see I have pieced enough smaller pieces together to make the front of the tunic. I left the raw edges of the seams on the outside and did a cretin stitch up each one to add interest to the fact it is all going to be pieced together...

Here is a close up of the finished seams...

I decided to put a binding on the bottom since I was not fond of the unfinished look...

Finished tunic.