Textile artist Andrea Cryer uses needle and thread to create unique portraits and landscapes. Combining hand stitching with machine stitching (using an old Bernina domestic sewing machine), she then handprints color onto the stitched drawing, using a limited palette of disperse dyes.
“I use thread as a tool for drawing,” she explained in an interview with Textile Artist. “This could be fine silk for stitching by hand and machine or wool, rope, wire or perhaps even plastic washing line.” It’s a process that absorbs hours on end and she admits she often finds herself at 2 AM wondering where the time went.
Her work, featuring mostly portraits and townscapes, tends to befuddle the viewer, seeming at first like a pen and ink drawing – but turning out to be something altogether different upon closer inspection.
“I love drawing, so that is the main focus of my work, says Cryer. “It has developed over time into experimenting with scale and using different media. My work ranges from small intimate drawings with lots of tiny detail and texture, to large freely stitched loose images.”
Each executed mark, however small, is a decision made. “Drawing with thread is a continuous process of decision making,” she writes on her website. “Deciding what is required, for example, to conjure up a facial feature – exactly where the needle enters and exits the fabric, the type of thread, the length of each stitch, the number of stitches needed to suggest a smile or capture an emotional nuance.”
Take a look at some of her captivating work in the gallery below:
