Art With Sewing Machine

Art With Sewing Machine:

Meredith Woolnough is a visual artist from Australia with a few nifty talents up her sleeve. One happens to be working with a sewing machine, and secondly she is able to capture the natural world using synthetic materials in such an incredible way. Her choice of water-soluble fabric allows the light to shine through the delicate material, adding layers of dimension.

Her process starts by finding a natural form to trace onto her selected fabric. Once complete, she can mount her embroideries to paper, suspend them in a clear glass frame, or put them on a t-shirt. She does it all using her good old-fashioned sewing machine.

Check out a number of different pieces from her growing collection and learn more about the artist below.

Bored Panda scored an interview with the artist, in which she gushed about her love for intricate patterns found throughout nature. She told the online site, “Nature is an endless source of inspiration for my work. I am fascinated by the patterns and structures found within the growth systems of plants, coral andshells, the way things branch out and unfurl.”

Meredith shows off her incredible work at a number of exhibits, she is scheduled for 3 separate showcases in the next 2 months. Meredith lives near the coast in Newcastle NSW, Australia. Using her unique drawing and sewing techniques she creates incredible “openwork compositions” that are proudly owned by both public and private collectors. You can own a piece of her work for yourself, prices range from the low hundreds to a few-thosand dollars.

In order to gain inspiration for her artwork, Meredith tries to spend plenty of time outdoors. She comments on the matter, “I go for regular bushwalks around my local area and I scuba dive whenever I can.”

By venturing to new places, Meredith is able to absorb different ideas she has not tried before. She is always open to inspiration from sources that are not nature themed, although she continually finds herself going back to the roots’ of the earth. She does push herself out of the box, last year she made a fun goal to complete a different piece of text every day for an entire month.

She didn’t just fashion random letters, Meredith used this as a way to journal her thoughts and feelings each day. When the text was first stitched it was easy to read, but Meredith’s secrets were washed away as soon as the fabric was introduced to water.

She shares an interesting fact about the non-woven water-soluble fabric she is fond of using. The medical industry used this type of material to make their laundry bags, that way they could toss them in the washing machine and the bag would simply dissolve so that no one had to touch the soiled laundry.

This benefits Meredith because as she says of her process, “I use this water-soluble film as my base fabric and once my embroidered design is complete I simply wash it all away in hot water to leave my skeleton of stitches behind.”

This also presents a unique challenge, because each stitch must be carefully connected, otherwise the entire design will fall to messy pieces. It has taken her years, but Meredith has fashioned a way of putting it all together that ensures each stitch is interconnected and will hold up.

When she is not creating these awesome nature embroideries, Meredith updates her blog where she highlights new projects she is working on, as well as explains how you can make your own natural art embroidery.