Embroidery + Folk Art

After doing some research into Folk Art I really liked the embroidery work in Folk Art since its just beautiful and so decorative, also I love the home-made look and feeling that comes from the embroidery work. Since this was a craft that the mothers, daughters, sisters and all the female members of the family and community and it was there contribution to the family and community at a time when women couldn't do much in the past - it was a craft in Folk Art that is something that the women shined in.

After looking at some different Folk embroidery I found that there is always some form of narrative or story in the work, for example a Folk Legend/cautionary tale.

I did a few sketch things for possible embroidery and some turned out alright.

So to experiment with some embroidery I decided to make a small design from the research that I've done, I made a simple design with a cockerel, house and morning sun (everyone said it reminded them of the Kellogg's Rooster) in a simple circle shape.

When I found a fabric to use as my base I had to now make a decision of whether or not to do all the design in embroidery stitches or to use a combination of appliqued fabric and stitches - so I thought that considering the time I have to do this in I would go with appliqueing, so using stitches to add more detail on the pieces of fabric would be better considering the time limit. 

When choosing the fabric I would use for the applique I thought that using a mixture of scrap fabrics (both block colours and patterned) would be a good move since the mixture of different and not-quite-matching fabrics would help communicate the essence of the kind of 'home-made' and low art feel that Folk Art has. So when I stitched the fabric on I left the rough edges and did a simple running stitch to also help create that 'home-made' feeling and after all the pieces had been stitched on I thought it looked a really good fabric collage.

Overall thought the design looked good but could do with some more detail in some areas, for example the hills but to say that it's my first go at designing a embroidery design and not going with a ready-drawn one - I also I think my embroidery skills have definitely gone downhill since I stopped taking textiles! What would my D.T teacher say! If I had time I would have to look at adding embroidery to my headdress that I am doing for my folk mask.