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Embroidering a Koala in 3 Minutes
I’ve been having a lot of fun embroidering an entire zoo full of animals. Here is a koala from start to finish. This took about 33 minutes to stitch and I have reduced it down to just under 3 minutes. It’s wool felt, embroidered with perle cotton onto a wool felt eyeglasses case. I drew the koala in Illustrator first and printed a pattern on freezer paper. This is easier for me than doing a pencil sketch because I can adjust the size to fit in exactly the space I need and I can reuse those pattern pieces again and [read more…]
Mini Tutorial: How to Tie a Square Knot
I use square knots often in class projects and I had a whole group recently that had never done one before so I thought I would make a very fast video tutorial. When I learned to tie a square knot in Girl Scouts a zillion years ago, we learned the mneumonic “left over right, right over left” to help remember the steps. In a class I took a few days ago she said “short over long, short over long”. Both of those work great!
Think to yourself “left over right, right over left” or “short over long” as you watch my [read more…]
The Power of Answering Questions
I’m working right now on a big art project that requires a little research. I love doing research and this project is especially fun because it involves animals.
Google has gotten less and less reliable for information that you can trust to not be something that an AI bot invented, so I wanted to go directly to the source, which means I have been emailing zoos, aquariums, and rescue organizations to ask for some simple animal facts. I tried to keep my questions easy to answer: asking for one specific fact about a particular animal. The responses to my questions have [read more…]
How do I Start to Learn Hand Embroidery?
I had a great email question a few days ago from a person who wanted to know how to get started learning to do hand embroidery. A friend of hers had taken several of my classes and said “Talk to Becka!” but she didn’t know what to choose. So I thought it would be helpful to write a post to help everyone find the right place for you to get started learning to embroider with me. I teach in a whole bunch of different formats so it can be hard to know where to start. Whether you like to learn [read more…]
Hi, I’m Becka.
Talking about fabric design, teaching, and the life and business of being an artist.
Teaching online and in person classes in embroidery, handcrafts, technology, fabric design and artist business skills. Co-author of The Spoonflower Handbook.
Making books, paper art and fiber art geekery.
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