SYTYC Week 6: European Thread Sketches

Ink was one of the harder themes for me in this competition.  Searching on Pinterest for inspiration only brought up tattoos.  I finally decided to do something with decor, and decided to make pen and ink art, but use free motion sewing rather than actually drawing or sketching.

What seems to be ink, is actually thread.

We have a lot of Italian influence in our house, and initially I thought about having the Colosseum, Leaning Tower of Pisa, and Rialto Bridge in Venice, but switched to have man-made landmarks in three different European countries instead: Big Ben {United Kingdom, London} the Colosseum {Italy, Rome} and the Eiffel Tower {France, Paris}

In our master bedroom we have a bare, large wall, and I thought the trio of interesting canvases would be cool.  Each structure represents countries important to our family.

First, I have a lot of Britisth ancestors on my side so Big Ben in London made the wall.

Italy's Colosseum in Rome is mainly for my husband who lived there for a few years before we got married and where we went on our honeymoon trip.

Our last name is French, my husband's ancestor was a stowaway from Bordeaux to the Americas in the 1670s, so the Eiffel Tower in Paris was important to include.

The process uses free motion sewing to actually sew the sketches of the different European famous structures.  The close up of these sketches looks a little "Tim Burton" but from a distance they look pretty great.

 I wanted to make the stark white canvas look like aged paper, so after sewing I dyed each canvas in tea.

To finish it off, I made my own wood frames, and stretched and stapled my sketches across.

I love the finished look, these remind me of something you'd buy from Ballard Designs or Pottery Barn, but in this case they cost me less than $2.00 for the whole set!