lazy eye patch

lazy eye patch
Originally uploaded by thirdpersonpossessive

Just now getting around to blogging this ... this was a last-minute addition to the Constructive Embroidery show with Meagan Haberman-Ducey and Lucy Robinson I recently participated in here in Bloomington, IN.

The eyepatch is another reverse-punch needle piece (related images: Baby Automaton reverse punch-needle embroidery, a "right-side-up" punch needle embroidery).

Unfortunately because of the rush to get this thing done I didn't document the entire process, & so I don't have a photo of the back side of this piece. What you see here is usually called the the reverse of this type of embroidery, so the other side is actually incredibly dense pile, which I covered with felt so the loops wouldn't come out. It made a nice little pillow for my eye .

This is an actual portrait of my own eye and hence looks even more weird and frightening on than you might expect:



The main problem with this technique is that it's very hard on the floss. If you haven't used a punch needle before, basically it's a hollow needle and the floss is threaded through the shaft of the needle and comes out at the point. The stitches are made by punching the needle into very taut fabric, leaving a pile on one side and small stitch on the other. Because the floss is rubbing against both the needle and the fabric before you're finally done with the stitch, it gets a little shredded on its journey and loses its luster. When you view the image at its largest size you can see how the stitches are very tiny, but also look a bit frayed and messy. So far I haven't found a solution to that, maybe just to use a different kind of fiber than floss entirely. But there are so many pretty colors of floss ... I just don't know. It's still an experiment in progress.