Stitched Textiles: Animals: (Stitched Textiles)

An inspirational, practical guide by textile artist Letitia Thompson, the world of Mrs Bertimus! In this exciting new book Letitia shows you how to create colourful, contemporary, animal-themed stitched textiles with a quirky mix of vintage and whimsical style. Letitia's subjects range from playful, dancing mice to crafty foxes, their personalities skillfully captured in stitch using free-motion machine embroidery and hand stitching. The progression from idea to stitch is developed in easy stages, providing a valuable insight into the author's creative process and the methods she uses to achieve her stunning textile artworks. Starting with a comprehensive materials and techniques section, the book includes three step-by-step projects, templates, and numerous finished pieces to spark your creativity, resulting in a unique source of ideas and inspiration for textile artists of all abilities.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Materials Where to start (Core techniques) Composition Going further (Advanced techniques) Telling a story Sausage Dog Midnight Fox Acrobat Mouse Afterword Templates Index

About the Author :
Letitia Thompson's artwork is inspired by the slow pace and sense of community of her day-to-day village life. Being able to watch nature on her doorstep has permeated the imagery and storytelling of her work, and she continues to explore her make-believe world of painted, collaged and stitched characters. The name Mrs Bertimus was born from a neighbour's story of a blackbird that regularly visited for crumbs. Letitia has worked in art education for over 20 years and loves meeting kindred spirits on her painting, mixed media and textiles workshops. She has exhibited across the UK, where she lives in a small village in the Lincolnshire countryside. To see more of Letitia's work visit www.mrsbertimus.co.uk.

Review :
It’s not often that you discover an artist who brings such sensitivity and originality to figurative machine embroidery but Mrs Bertimus (the pseudonym of artist Letitia Thompson) is one of this rare breed. In this book she explains how to create captivating animal stitched portraits using fabric collage, free-motion machine embroidery and a dash of hand stitch, where, ‘the thread becomes the pencil and the fabric becomes the paint.’ She breaks down the process into easy-to-follow steps, including lessons on, and insights into, sketching your subject, techniques and composition, and creating original work that tells a story through your choice of portraiture. There are three projects, but all of the examples in this book are a work of art in their own right that everyone will be able to recreate. This is a beautifully thorough book about the authors adorable and visually complex multi-media art work. She has given clear photographic step-by-step instructions to recreate her projects or inspire us to make our stitched textiles. Also included are steps and ways to personalize each piece with paint, distressing, stencils, stamps that give her work international recognition. I highly recommend her book for experts and beginners! Hope you enjoy it. In this book, Mrs Bertimus takes the reader through her creative process, from materials and sketching to finished objects. There are three lovely projects to enjoy, with helpful templates included in the back of the book – I'm particularly excited about trying the little Sausage Dog art quilt. Before the projects, she goes into detail about the tools and techniques she uses to create her artworks so that the reader can create their own inspired by her work. The book is filled with examples from her sketchbooks and finished pieces, making it beautiful to just flick through and enjoy. I love her art style and am looking forward to applying many of the techniques to my own work I absolutely love Mrs Bertimus’ artwork and the way she lays down colours and textures. Her embroidery work is just an extension of her stunning paintings. The collages are so beautiful on the animals and there are step-by-step guides to follow along. As an artist who has never done machine embroidery before, I feel the instructions are so clear that I could actually give it a go myself. There are pattern pieces in the back but you could try this with your own artwork too. I can’t wait to see the new collection of goodies she has planned for the coming months. This book would make such a gorgeous gift for someone who loves to sew, draw, paint or craft. Buy two. You’ll want to keep one for yourself. Letitia Thompson, also known as Mrs Bertimus, generously shares all the whimsy and wonder of her mixed media work. Whether you want to imitate her style or use it as a springboard to develop your own, there is plenty to satisfy. She carefully breaks down the stages and processes involved in her complex collaged pieces, offering invaluable insight and thoughtful tips. Words and images combine to guide you seamlessly through composition and construction. Her approach with sticky notes will enlighten, and the step-by-step projects will delight. If you think that all stitched animals are cute and twee, you haven’t seen the work of Letitia Thompson, aka Mrs Bertimus. Her drawing skills are amazing but no need to worry if you don’t draw, as templates are provided in this book. Mrs Bertimus is just as brilliant with art materials as she is with her sewing machine. In fact, her realisation that, with the darning foot on and the feed dogs down, she could turn her sewing machine into a drawing machine, made this book possible. After a very brief description of materials, the book moves straight into the nitty-gritty of technique, inspiration, design, and stitch. From colour mixing paints to working with a drawing, this section has some great ideas for getting the tonal values right. Having made a template and using those tonal values, we go through the process of building-up cut fabric pieces to translate them into stitch. Then it is machine embroidery and working the background. This is a great source of ideas – I love her backgrounds. The section on composition takes us through the nuts and bolts of this tricky subject: balance, orientation and trouble-shooting are well covered and could relate to any textile application. Mrs Bertimus has some excellent tricks to aid composition – but I won’t give the game away here. Suffice it to say that I will be adopting some of them myself. Backgrounds are an important part of any artwork and the ideas in this book could be used for painting or drawing as well as the appliqué shown. Blocks of colour and stitch combine to integrate the subject matter without intruding on the focal point. Paper collage, stitching into paper, gelli plate printing (which is used for design as well as stitch) are all covered. Ideas for using the results of these techniques are also shown. A chapter on ‘Telling a Story’ is useful and covers many examples of story sources and the use of the tales. All these are told in completed works. The final chapter on Projects includes templates for making some of the animals contained in the book. Full step-by-step instructions for their use can also be found here. My grandson is owned by Monty – a ‘sausage dog’ – and there just happens to be a dachshund template, so I might be turning out ‘the full Monty’ soon. All inspired by Mrs Bertimus.