Marky Stardust

Here's a space oddity I made for a friend's birthday.  

It's a continuation of my love affair with heat'n'bond and an experiment with machine and hand embroidery.  

I found this Bowie card in a great little card shop in Warwick months ago.  Of course I couldn't actually find it when I needed it, but in the meantime I fancied a go at making my own Ziggy.

I stole I photo of my Muse from Facebook and used Picasa to alter the photo until it was easy to discern the main shapes.  I then used another piece of free software, Microsoft Paint, to over paint until I had only the features I wanted to keep.

I then used a lightbox to trace the three shapes to be made with fabric - the face, the beard and the red lightening bolt.  

The flesh tone fabric came from a bin of pre-cut fat quarters at my local fabric shop and the beard and background are Kaffe Fassett shot cotton for added Stardust-iness.

I used a metallic embroidery thread and machined the purple flash then hand embroidered the rest of the features in.  It was really tricky getting the hand stitches through the layers of fabric and heat'n'bond but it all came together in the end!

I was planning to use red sequins on the red flash but thought I stood a chance of making a dog's dinner of it, especially given the stiffness of all those layers.  

The birthday boy appreciated his Bowie-fication - or so he claimed!

Linking up with TGIFF at Quilt Matters :).