Weekend Workshop - Otomi Embroidery

The weekend class was loosely based around Otomi embroidery and different methods of achieving the style of embroidery. The tutor, Abigail Brown has kindly allowed me to photograph her work.

Traditional Otomi embroideries are heavily stitched, colourful and quite naive in the depiction of the animals and flowers as can be seen in this piece that Abigail purchased in Mexico.

My interpretation, stitched in crewel wool.

Abigail suggested that a similar effect could be achieved by fusing cut outs onto the base fabric and adding some stitch to permanently attach the fabrics. This is her interpretation of Otomi with an Australian feel.

This piece uses stich to create the image

This is another piece of her work, this time using running stich and using the negative space around the motif for stitch.

I liked the idea of filling the background or negative with stitch so made a start on this piece.

The two small pieces will probably end up as pages in a book, they are samples or learning pieces and not intended to be used for anything.