Wool applique and embroidery

I have a lovely quilty crafty neighbour whose children are all grown and who has the most wonderful wall of neatly folded fabric I have ever seen. I love to pop over and share books and inspiration and advice. My quilty neighbour recently lent me a pile of felt applique and stitching books.

Three of the books were by Sue Spargo. Sue is an inspirational and prolific teacher and author and maker. Her work is many layered, dense, tactile and colourful with a folk art feel to it. Sue uses wool quite a lot in her work – wool felt and wool threads for applique and embroidery. Her motifs are simple bird and flower shapes but with many layers of colour and stitching they become this amazing tapestry of colour and texture. One of the books in my pile of loaned books is her latest book is Contemporary Folk (you can see more here). This book – interestingly – is written in both French and English. And the templates are printed in the book at 100% size ready to photocopy.

More woolly things I love:

• Another artist who works in felt is Geninne - I love her watercolours of birds and now she is making these beautiful wool felt and embroidered stitcheries. (pictured)
• I also am a long time admirer of Mimi Kirchner. Her dolls are amazing of course – but the detail is where it is all at – and her wool embroidery which she does on the woollen dolls is just incredible. (example pictured)
• This woolly embroidered hat and these mittens and this collar. (pictured)
• Here is a sweet felt embroidered cardigan makeover.
• I very much like Alicia’s Crewel ABC embroidery pattern.
• And Checkout girls applique hoops are sweet.

Tagged as: applique, embroidery, felt, wool