McGarrity enjoys creating embroidery art centered on animals, which is something we had the opportunity to see countless times before. However, she still manages to make her works look fresh and stand out thanks to the use of vibrant color palettes.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

“Animals are a viral subject, so I like to add my own ‘flavor’ to a painting by reinterpreting them with various color palettes,” McGarrity shared in a recent interview. “I still feel like I’m getting the hang of things, so I enjoy experimenting with a wide range of stitches and techniques.”

Fiber art was something that McGarrity always appreciated, and she engaged in its various forms over the years. However, it was embroidery that ultimately captured her attention, and she has been making embroidery art for the past three years.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

Thanks to her dedication and continuous effort, McGarrity brought her embroidery skills to an impressive level. Her works, which can take days to complete, are complex, and detailed, and can be easily mistaken for a painting. Scroll down to enjoy more of them.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

The post Check Out This Colorful Animal Embroidery By Laura McGarrity appeared first on PlayJunkie.

And so, a love for sewing and embroidery began – one that would eventually culminate in an Etsy shop where she now sells hand-embroidered necklaces and earrings, all made with special care and attention. “I used to work as a freelance photojournalist, but when I got pregnant, my husband and I decided that I’d stay at home for a while and take care of our daughter,” she explained in an interview with the Etsy blog, describing how her career came to be. “About a year after she was born, I started to feel like I wanted to do something creative again. I started making an inventory of my skills and what I’d like to do, and I decided I’d really enjoy working with fabric and drawing and colors. I had a few threads, so I tried embroidering, and it’s cliché, but it was love at first sight.”

When it comes to Thursday More’s creative inspiration, color plays a huge part. she admits she goes color hunting on the internet, saving references on her computer for a later time. Aside from color, her designs are also influenced by her mood, imagination, and memories, making her creations both personal and appealing.

“I try to stitch every day, even just for an hour,” she says. “I like the portability, the fact that I can take it with me wherever I go. It doesn’t require electricity. It doesn’t require the internet. With hand embroidery, you’re just in the moment.” Here are some of our favorite creations by her:

The post Why Not Add Embroidery to Your Jewelry Collection? appeared first on PlayJunkie.

According to Stiglets, nurturing ourselves and tapping into our creativity allows us to become happier, more joyful, whole people. “I encourage you to slow down, “she says. “Take some time to notice the world around you. Look within and help your mind focus and calm so that you can come from a place of quiet rather than chaos. When your mind is peaceful, your life is richer.”

In an interview with the Etsy blog, Stiglets recalled how she first experimented with embroidery when she was a teenager, by stitching little designs onto her backpack and jeans. “I put it away for a while, then came back to it years later when my kids were very young, and I pretty much never stopped!” she says. Completely self-taught, her craft was learned by trial and error, allowing herself room to make mistakes.

The kits she sells include everything you need to get started wit embroidery yourself. The pattern is pre-printed on the fabric, and the floss, needle, and hoop are included too. She also adds a Getting Started Guide, which walks you through setting up your hoop and prepping your embroidery floss. Her How-to Guide includes diagrams for a handful of her favorite basic stitches. “I give notes for each design, including which stitches I used where, so folks can replicate my example photos if they want to—or they can do their own thing,” explains Stiglets.

Get going!

The post Now Is the Perfect Time to Take On Embroidery appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Now her studio practice is divided into two parts: making embroidered accessories on the one hand, and one of a kind artworks on the other. “I try to use different embroidery techniques together,” she explains. “Enriching texture to give it a visual dynamism is very important for me.”

The finished product is a combination of illustration and embroidery, color and texture. “Mostly I try to use embroidery techniques on patterns that match their real-life texture,” notes Yazici. “I enjoy combining these traditional techniques with modern patterns. I also like fancy and intricate embroideries and I wouldn’t hesitate to decorate my works with sequins and beads.”

Her work consists of quirky and surreal worlds and characters – a dreamy landscape where magic is possible. “Even if I don’t know where to place my work within contemporary art right now, I do think they share similar characteristics with both illustration and fiber art and I try to achieve a balance between them,” says Yazici.

The post The Teeny-Tiny Embroideries of Irem Yazici appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Watching Kucherenko’s embroidery art, it is hard not to think that her subjects could easily jump out of the canvas and join their kind in the ocean. In order to achieve this effect and create realistic and colorful jellyfish, she uses numerous techniques including beading, needle felting, and thread painting. She also attaches other fabric to her works in order to enhance the impression.

Kucherenko also pays close attention to the presentation of her work. She creates stunning and carefully planned backgrounds that perfectly complement each of her creations.

Check out her works below.

The post Talented Embroidery Artist Creates Awesome Lifelike Jellyfish appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Having graduated in Painting and Drawing from the University of Utah, her art heavily relies on her background in painting. According to Clark, it was during her studies that she discovered her love for embroidery and thread drawings (drawing with her sewing machine), blurring the lines between fine art and craft.

“My background in painting has allowed me to explore the material using techniques from the worlds of drawing and painting,” she explains. “Engaging both traditional and innovative techniques in employing formal qualities with density, texture, and pattern.”

“Visually, I love it when people bypass my work thinking it’s nothing other than a simple painting,” she further relayed in an interview with Jung Katz. “Until they look a little closer and see that in fact it is fibers/thread. Then they have to proceed to look even closer.”

Take a closer look:

The post These Thread Paintings Blur the Lines Between Fine Art and Craft appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Jo Gibbs divides her twenty-year plus career into three distinct periods: Handbags, Vessels, and Flat Work. “I’m very excited to be working on a series of small portraits and feel this idea will translate well to other communities,” she added in an interview with Textile Artist. “I’m very interested in finding new audiences and telling different stories perhaps by working with distinctive groups or museum collections. I’ve found the stories I tell, although extremely personal are also universal.”

Her latest body of portrait work, The Value of Making, depicts various making disciplines through to-scale representations of tools; hand-stitched exquisite still life portraits in a collage of silk organza. Jo Gibbs made these portraits to reflect how proud she is to be a member of this creative community and to celebrate the skill, dexterity, and creative problem solving of people who make things.

When it comes to her work itself, it is essentially made from hand stitch layers of silk organza. “I use mercerized cotton rather than embroidery thread, and so far because my work is small I haven’t found the need to work on a frame,” she explained. “I work from home, I like to sit at the kitchen table in front of French windows because the light is so good,” she describes the work process. “I have a metalwork bench in the garage but I do far less metal work at the moment, my flat work has taken over.”

Follow her on Instagram for more:

The post The Delicate Textile Art of Emily Jo Gibbs appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Based in Melbourne, Australia McKellar admits to having a passion for crafting unique brand expressions through visual storytelling and functional design. Her projects are approached with conceptual and strategic thinking, creating work that is considered, charismatic and beautiful.

But it’s her embroideries which first caught our attention. Her work includes digital prints on fabric, which she then hand-embroiders. “I learned about sewing at a young age,” McKellar shared in an interview with Pikaland. “My mum used to make all of our clothes and we were given hand-embroidered singlets for birthdays as children. I have collected a lot of second-hand sewing reference books and embroidery was something that appealed to me. You don’t have to be a master at it to make it look special. I transferred my drawings onto fabrics and started embroidering small details and have continued working like this.”

“I grew up in a very creative environment,” she added. “My aunt is a professional illustrator so from a very early age I learned with a lot of hard work and dedication that it is possible to make art your career. I also learned at school that I could make a living from being creative and have since pursued it!”

Take a look at some of her works, embroidered or otherwise.

The post Laura McKellar Has a Fresh Approach to Art Making appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“Although I’ve always loved art, I didn’t have any particular interest in textile arts when I was growing up, nor did I have any close relatives who did,” she admitted in an interview with Textile Artist. “When I started sewing near the end of my degree it was the first time I’d picked up a needle in years and I didn’t really know what I was doing with it. But I have always loved to draw and spent a lot of time drawing animals and exploring nature, and I think I’ve come back round to this in my current work.”

Originally from Buckinghamshire, and currently living and working in York, Giordano has been hard at work since graduating in 2011. As her work is freehand there is no prior pattern, meaning she works from her own drawings that have been created using a combination of reference and imagination. And with clients that include Penguin, Vintage Books, Bloomsbury, Liberty, and a range of private clients – her original work hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“I think I fell in love with the tactile nature of sewing and working with fabric, but I don’t regret any of the hours spent drawing as it informs how I work now,” she says. “I find I get a sense of satisfaction from working with textiles that I never had with 2D mediums.”

Working on unbleached calico that she dyes by hand, as well as single strands of sewing thread (either cotton or polyester), Giordano’s designs are drawn onto the fabric with a vanishing fabric marker.

“I’m always a bit torn between referring to my work as ‘illustration’ or ‘embroidery’,” she says, “having gone into it with the mindset of an illustrator and having no background in traditional crafts, and yet I spend too much time playing around with fabric and sewing needles to feel I can entirely say I’m an illustrator – but I like to think that’s what people find interesting about my art, that it is in a space between embroidery and painting.”

The post Chloe Giordano’s Art is at a Crossroads Between Embroidery and Illustration appeared first on PlayJunkie.

It wasn’t long before she mastered her craft, graduating from the Royal School of Needlework with an FDA in Hand Embroidery, and then from Falmouth University with a BA in Contemporary Crafts.

Nowadays, her main technique is goldwork embroidery. “I am fascinated by the way metal threads play with light and the beautiful qualities different types of metal can bring to a piece of work,” she says. “I really like the fact that metal brings an unexpected hardness to textiles, which is usually seen as quite a soft medium.”

With a love of stitch, Newton takes inspiration from the rich heritage of embroidery, while finding her own personal voice through it. She also passes her love on, by teaching embroidery and showing people from all walks of life just how awesome stitching can be.

“Goldwork is an area of embroidery which is sometimes perceived to be somewhat traditional and has many rules,” she says. “To me, a rule of how something must be worked was at some point a new invention itself, and that excites me and keeps me inspired to explore what metal threads can do, without worrying if I am doing it ‘right’.”

Here are some of her embroidery works:

The post Hanny Newton’s Embroideries Glisten with Gold appeared first on PlayJunkie.

McGarrity enjoys creating embroidery art centered on animals, which is something we had the opportunity to see countless times before. However, she still manages to make her works look fresh and stand out thanks to the use of vibrant color palettes.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

“Animals are a viral subject, so I like to add my own ‘flavor’ to a painting by reinterpreting them with various color palettes,” McGarrity shared in a recent interview. “I still feel like I’m getting the hang of things, so I enjoy experimenting with a wide range of stitches and techniques.”

Fiber art was something that McGarrity always appreciated, and she engaged in its various forms over the years. However, it was embroidery that ultimately captured her attention, and she has been making embroidery art for the past three years.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

Thanks to her dedication and continuous effort, McGarrity brought her embroidery skills to an impressive level. Her works, which can take days to complete, are complex, and detailed, and can be easily mistaken for a painting. Scroll down to enjoy more of them.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laura McGarrity (@a_warm_garlic_yurt)

The post Check Out This Colorful Animal Embroidery By Laura McGarrity appeared first on PlayJunkie.

And so, a love for sewing and embroidery began – one that would eventually culminate in an Etsy shop where she now sells hand-embroidered necklaces and earrings, all made with special care and attention. “I used to work as a freelance photojournalist, but when I got pregnant, my husband and I decided that I’d stay at home for a while and take care of our daughter,” she explained in an interview with the Etsy blog, describing how her career came to be. “About a year after she was born, I started to feel like I wanted to do something creative again. I started making an inventory of my skills and what I’d like to do, and I decided I’d really enjoy working with fabric and drawing and colors. I had a few threads, so I tried embroidering, and it’s cliché, but it was love at first sight.”

When it comes to Thursday More’s creative inspiration, color plays a huge part. she admits she goes color hunting on the internet, saving references on her computer for a later time. Aside from color, her designs are also influenced by her mood, imagination, and memories, making her creations both personal and appealing.

“I try to stitch every day, even just for an hour,” she says. “I like the portability, the fact that I can take it with me wherever I go. It doesn’t require electricity. It doesn’t require the internet. With hand embroidery, you’re just in the moment.” Here are some of our favorite creations by her:

The post Why Not Add Embroidery to Your Jewelry Collection? appeared first on PlayJunkie.

According to Stiglets, nurturing ourselves and tapping into our creativity allows us to become happier, more joyful, whole people. “I encourage you to slow down, “she says. “Take some time to notice the world around you. Look within and help your mind focus and calm so that you can come from a place of quiet rather than chaos. When your mind is peaceful, your life is richer.”

In an interview with the Etsy blog, Stiglets recalled how she first experimented with embroidery when she was a teenager, by stitching little designs onto her backpack and jeans. “I put it away for a while, then came back to it years later when my kids were very young, and I pretty much never stopped!” she says. Completely self-taught, her craft was learned by trial and error, allowing herself room to make mistakes.

The kits she sells include everything you need to get started wit embroidery yourself. The pattern is pre-printed on the fabric, and the floss, needle, and hoop are included too. She also adds a Getting Started Guide, which walks you through setting up your hoop and prepping your embroidery floss. Her How-to Guide includes diagrams for a handful of her favorite basic stitches. “I give notes for each design, including which stitches I used where, so folks can replicate my example photos if they want to—or they can do their own thing,” explains Stiglets.

Get going!

The post Now Is the Perfect Time to Take On Embroidery appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Now her studio practice is divided into two parts: making embroidered accessories on the one hand, and one of a kind artworks on the other. “I try to use different embroidery techniques together,” she explains. “Enriching texture to give it a visual dynamism is very important for me.”

The finished product is a combination of illustration and embroidery, color and texture. “Mostly I try to use embroidery techniques on patterns that match their real-life texture,” notes Yazici. “I enjoy combining these traditional techniques with modern patterns. I also like fancy and intricate embroideries and I wouldn’t hesitate to decorate my works with sequins and beads.”

Her work consists of quirky and surreal worlds and characters – a dreamy landscape where magic is possible. “Even if I don’t know where to place my work within contemporary art right now, I do think they share similar characteristics with both illustration and fiber art and I try to achieve a balance between them,” says Yazici.

The post The Teeny-Tiny Embroideries of Irem Yazici appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Watching Kucherenko’s embroidery art, it is hard not to think that her subjects could easily jump out of the canvas and join their kind in the ocean. In order to achieve this effect and create realistic and colorful jellyfish, she uses numerous techniques including beading, needle felting, and thread painting. She also attaches other fabric to her works in order to enhance the impression.

Kucherenko also pays close attention to the presentation of her work. She creates stunning and carefully planned backgrounds that perfectly complement each of her creations.

Check out her works below.

The post Talented Embroidery Artist Creates Awesome Lifelike Jellyfish appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Having graduated in Painting and Drawing from the University of Utah, her art heavily relies on her background in painting. According to Clark, it was during her studies that she discovered her love for embroidery and thread drawings (drawing with her sewing machine), blurring the lines between fine art and craft.

“My background in painting has allowed me to explore the material using techniques from the worlds of drawing and painting,” she explains. “Engaging both traditional and innovative techniques in employing formal qualities with density, texture, and pattern.”

“Visually, I love it when people bypass my work thinking it’s nothing other than a simple painting,” she further relayed in an interview with Jung Katz. “Until they look a little closer and see that in fact it is fibers/thread. Then they have to proceed to look even closer.”

Take a closer look:

The post These Thread Paintings Blur the Lines Between Fine Art and Craft appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Jo Gibbs divides her twenty-year plus career into three distinct periods: Handbags, Vessels, and Flat Work. “I’m very excited to be working on a series of small portraits and feel this idea will translate well to other communities,” she added in an interview with Textile Artist. “I’m very interested in finding new audiences and telling different stories perhaps by working with distinctive groups or museum collections. I’ve found the stories I tell, although extremely personal are also universal.”

Her latest body of portrait work, The Value of Making, depicts various making disciplines through to-scale representations of tools; hand-stitched exquisite still life portraits in a collage of silk organza. Jo Gibbs made these portraits to reflect how proud she is to be a member of this creative community and to celebrate the skill, dexterity, and creative problem solving of people who make things.

When it comes to her work itself, it is essentially made from hand stitch layers of silk organza. “I use mercerized cotton rather than embroidery thread, and so far because my work is small I haven’t found the need to work on a frame,” she explained. “I work from home, I like to sit at the kitchen table in front of French windows because the light is so good,” she describes the work process. “I have a metalwork bench in the garage but I do far less metal work at the moment, my flat work has taken over.”

Follow her on Instagram for more:

The post The Delicate Textile Art of Emily Jo Gibbs appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Based in Melbourne, Australia McKellar admits to having a passion for crafting unique brand expressions through visual storytelling and functional design. Her projects are approached with conceptual and strategic thinking, creating work that is considered, charismatic and beautiful.

But it’s her embroideries which first caught our attention. Her work includes digital prints on fabric, which she then hand-embroiders. “I learned about sewing at a young age,” McKellar shared in an interview with Pikaland. “My mum used to make all of our clothes and we were given hand-embroidered singlets for birthdays as children. I have collected a lot of second-hand sewing reference books and embroidery was something that appealed to me. You don’t have to be a master at it to make it look special. I transferred my drawings onto fabrics and started embroidering small details and have continued working like this.”

“I grew up in a very creative environment,” she added. “My aunt is a professional illustrator so from a very early age I learned with a lot of hard work and dedication that it is possible to make art your career. I also learned at school that I could make a living from being creative and have since pursued it!”

Take a look at some of her works, embroidered or otherwise.

The post Laura McKellar Has a Fresh Approach to Art Making appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“Although I’ve always loved art, I didn’t have any particular interest in textile arts when I was growing up, nor did I have any close relatives who did,” she admitted in an interview with Textile Artist. “When I started sewing near the end of my degree it was the first time I’d picked up a needle in years and I didn’t really know what I was doing with it. But I have always loved to draw and spent a lot of time drawing animals and exploring nature, and I think I’ve come back round to this in my current work.”

Originally from Buckinghamshire, and currently living and working in York, Giordano has been hard at work since graduating in 2011. As her work is freehand there is no prior pattern, meaning she works from her own drawings that have been created using a combination of reference and imagination. And with clients that include Penguin, Vintage Books, Bloomsbury, Liberty, and a range of private clients – her original work hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“I think I fell in love with the tactile nature of sewing and working with fabric, but I don’t regret any of the hours spent drawing as it informs how I work now,” she says. “I find I get a sense of satisfaction from working with textiles that I never had with 2D mediums.”

Working on unbleached calico that she dyes by hand, as well as single strands of sewing thread (either cotton or polyester), Giordano’s designs are drawn onto the fabric with a vanishing fabric marker.

“I’m always a bit torn between referring to my work as ‘illustration’ or ‘embroidery’,” she says, “having gone into it with the mindset of an illustrator and having no background in traditional crafts, and yet I spend too much time playing around with fabric and sewing needles to feel I can entirely say I’m an illustrator – but I like to think that’s what people find interesting about my art, that it is in a space between embroidery and painting.”

The post Chloe Giordano’s Art is at a Crossroads Between Embroidery and Illustration appeared first on PlayJunkie.

It wasn’t long before she mastered her craft, graduating from the Royal School of Needlework with an FDA in Hand Embroidery, and then from Falmouth University with a BA in Contemporary Crafts.

Nowadays, her main technique is goldwork embroidery. “I am fascinated by the way metal threads play with light and the beautiful qualities different types of metal can bring to a piece of work,” she says. “I really like the fact that metal brings an unexpected hardness to textiles, which is usually seen as quite a soft medium.”

With a love of stitch, Newton takes inspiration from the rich heritage of embroidery, while finding her own personal voice through it. She also passes her love on, by teaching embroidery and showing people from all walks of life just how awesome stitching can be.

“Goldwork is an area of embroidery which is sometimes perceived to be somewhat traditional and has many rules,” she says. “To me, a rule of how something must be worked was at some point a new invention itself, and that excites me and keeps me inspired to explore what metal threads can do, without worrying if I am doing it ‘right’.”

Here are some of her embroidery works:

The post Hanny Newton’s Embroideries Glisten with Gold appeared first on PlayJunkie.