I ‘Paint’ Photorealistic Portraits With My Sewing Machine

When I bought my first sewing machine 10 years ago, I soon realized that stitching in a straight line simply wasn’t my thing. The harder I tried, the wonkier it got and frustration levels were on the rise. But then I learned about free-motion machine embroidery, where you get to use your machine as a drawing tool by dropping the feed dogs and letting your needle become your pen. This was the most liberating experience for me and I started to ‘stitch outside the box’ and developed my own technique in embroidering with a regular household sewing machine. I dived into portrait work and my aim was to translate wildlife photos into thread, focusing on patterns and textures and colors, zooming in on my subjects, and recreating realism on fabric.

There is no paint involved in my work. They all start with a pencil sketch on my background fabric, which turns into a fabric collage as my underpainting and then I add layers upon layers to achieve photorealistic wildlife portraits. Depending on their size, they can take up to four months to be completed. I haven’t counted the number of spools of thread I go through with each piece, but I usually use up to 45 different colors, where 23 of them can usually be found in the eye of the embroidery. This is where I spend most of my time on, as it is the ‘centerpiece’ of each portrait.

My career highlights were the two chimp portraits I got to embroider for Dr. Jane Goodall, the famous primatologist, anthropologist, and UN messenger of peace. I got to auction one of them off together with her on stage in 2018, to raise money for the Jane Goodall Institute. The second portrait was meant to be received as a gift by her this year to celebrate the anniversary of the Gombe National Park, where her journey began all those years ago, but due to COVID-19 unfortunately, needed to be postponed.

More info: textilewildlifeart.com | Instagram