This otter is my first fully 3D, free-standing embroidery creature made by using a papercraft model. I was embroidering onto interfacing, though, not paper. I adapted it from a model by Ayumu Saito (of Craft Pocket) at the Canon website. I finished it in March 2023.
I liked the idea of making a book of hours, because their illustrations can be very beautiful, but I certainly couldn't do that many pages of embroidery. It would be extremely time-consuming and in any case these fabric books are quite bulky, as you can see from this photo, even with only a few pages). So, that's why mine is a "Book of hours and hours of work by Laura Vivanco." I did keep the religious associations, though, so each of the illustrations accompanies a quotation from the Bible. I finished it in February 2025.
The more 3D mouse was the one I made specifically with this backing fabric in mind. I felt it would be fun to have it look like there's a mouse sitting in the cup. It was made in June 2022 and I designed it myself. The flatter mouse, with arms, had been finished in May 2022 and is based on a mouse drawn by Noela Young for Beverley Randell's John: The Mouse Who Learned to Read.
The text accompanying the mice is "Give us this day our daily bread" (Matthew 6:11).
These bats were a test in how tidily I could embroider so that the ends etc weren't visible on the front. They came from Graham Leslie McCallum's 4000 Animal, Bird & Fish Motifs. I made the two with fleece bodies in September 2022. I'm not sure when I made the third, but I thought it went well with the other two. It's flying away from them so, given their background fabric, the one by itself is a "bat out of hell" and the other two are following it.
The text I chose to accompany them is "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil" (Matthew 6:13).
I started the rat in 2022 but left it unfinished until February 2025. I embroidered the body in two different shades of grey. The rat is based on an image made available by the DataBase Center for Life Science and I used the different layers in that image to guide me when I built up layers of material to make the stumpwork (raised) embroidery version of the rat. The carnation is made out of pink needlelace.
The hedgehog is based on the design for a 3D paper model by Ayumu Saito (from Craft Pocket) at the Canon website. I only used the front of the model and this was completed in March 2023.
The text I chose to accompany the hedgehog is "Be not afraid ye beasts of the field for the pastures of the wilderness do spring" (Joel 2:22).
The puddle was completed in February 2023. It's based on a work by M. C. Escher. The "reflection" of the trees in the puddle was first embroidered onto grey felt in darker thread. It was then covered by a layer of "water" (silver organza). The puddle is surrounded by a layer of mud (brown felt) which has been embroidered with muddy footprints.
The text I chose for this image was "For now we see through a glass darkly but then face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Completed in December 2024, the design was created by Sarah Homfray, for her channel members/patrons.
The cover of Off the Page is sewn directly onto white felt (synthetic) with a black, very thin, knitting yarn that has sparkly bits. I used corded Brussels stitch and made the first word very padded so it would stand off the page.
I chose the title because all of the contents are stumpwork (i.e. embroidery which rises off the background) based on illustrations for (paper) books.
