New York Inspired Make

An appliqué and machine embroidery picture I made from one of my New York photos. Can you tell what it is? In case you can’t, I’ll tell ya. It’s Times Square. Based on a blurry photo I took one late afternoon as we were making our way ‘home’ after another day of sightseeing.

We never actually made it to Times Squares, we just saw it in the distance a couple of times. It sounds like we probably didn’t miss much. Unless one is into lots of people and very bright lights. I have to say I’m a ‘no’ to both of those things. ;-)

A little close up. It’s kind of a different way of working to make appliqué/machine embroidery like this. I wasn’t quite sure how to achieve the effect I wanted of the neon lights. But I think it turned out ok in the end. But those tiny bits of fabric were really fiddly!

For the larger bits, I used hemming web, but for the teeny tiny bits I decided to just use a glue stick. Less risk of burning my fingers on the iron!

On the left is the photo I used as inspiration. In used this very blurry version for a couple of reasons. One, because I like the blurriness! Look how pretty the neon colours look, all blurring together.

And two, if I’d used a photo that was more in focus, I might have got too bogged down in details and probably given up. I wanted the feel of that late afternoon, not the minutiae of the real place…

To make myself focus even less on the details, I did a small sketch, with only the essential information. I figured I could always add, or make up, the details when I was actually working on the machine embroidery.