Freestyle machine stitching can come in all kinds of styles, but I love it when I see an artist who takes their craft one step further, like the work of Cindy Hickok. Cindy creates these freestyle machine embroidery designs and then often transforms them into 3D creations that further the craft of the whole piece.
As she describes it in her bio, ” I “paint” each day, with thread as my medium, the needle as my paintbrush, the sewing machine an extension of arm. With foot on the pedal and tongue in the cheek, I create works that satisfy my desire to express life as I see it. ”
Many of Cindy’s thread paintings are twists on much-loved paintings or well known images. Her sometimes cheeky creations are made exclusively on the sewing machine, where she stitches on water-soluble fabric that is later dissolved leaving only the thread. It’s a technique that is common in freestyle machine embroidery, but doesn’t often get utilized into 3D creations and fabric sculptures such as these. I think it lends an extra layer of interest to the stories often told in her work.
If you want to learn more about Cindy and see more of her work, check out her website, where it has to be said she certainly works tongue firmly in cheek and with deft skill at the sewing machine.
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Gear Threads is brought to you from the offbeat gals at Urban Threads. Created by illustrator Niamh O’Connor, Urban Threads is revolutionizing machine embroidery one edgy, elegant, innovative, and/or offbeat design at a time. Discover the future of digital stitchery at www.urbanthreads.com.
