Winner of the 2011 Hand & Lock Embroidery Prize Open Category

The Hand & Lock Embroidery prize is a prestigious British embroidery prize. It is open to international embroiderers and in 2011 has 2 catagories: a student prize and and open prize. I entered this year, 2011, into the open catagory. The piece i produced responded to the Bunty's old drawers, Full Bloom brief.

My entry won first prize in the 2011 Open Category. Please view more details of the entry at http://www.handembroidery.com/2011/09/hand-lock-2011-prize-for-embroidery-winners/

I began my design process by investigating different blooms and different types of embellishment and quilting. I deconstructed a beautiful joie de voie design and chose my blooms, flowers, foilage and pattern from a variety of sources. Next was the pattern for the dress as this foundation garment needed to be embellished before it was stitched together. After altering a pattern, creating an exagerrated shape and proportion i began creating the overall embroidery pattern.

The base fabric had to support the weight of the embroidery so i chose delustered satin in a biscuit colour. I cut coloured felt pieces and appliqued them between layers of vintage tuelle lace and organza using a shadow quiting method, delicately bringing all layers together with a metallic silver chain stitch. The gingham textile was revitalised by using an old technique called Depression lace in which gingham fabric is embroidered simply with cotton thread creating the illusion of lace. 

Next was to create the various blooms. Some beaded and embroidered directly onto the fabric and others made entirely separate of the dress and stitched on by hand afterwards. Using materials such as hand dyed silk ribbons, cords, sequins, metal threads and feather stitching delicacy was added into the design. The embroidery as a whole is bold in its appearance but is made up of many intricate technqiues, each technique able to be used on its own for effect.

The final stage of the embroidery was the Trapunto quilting on the sleeves. As i have no trapunto embroidery machines i used a domestic machine and stitched the design as carefully and precisely as i could and threaded the cord in by hand. it was rewarding to achieve the result i did even if it did take longer than a machine would. I cut out the panels of the dress, very carefully, and then stitched them all together into the dress you see in the picture.