ELLEN FENG

“Sunflowers in Bloom”

Materials: embroidery thread on cotton-cashmere sweater
I created this piece by turning an extra-large sweater that I found at a thrift store last year into a cropped sweater and then added some embroidery designs in the corner of the sweater. I accomplished this by first cutting off the bottom edge of the sweater (to save for later), cut the sweater to the length I wanted it, pinned the pieces together and used a sewing machine to attach them. In our workshop, we learned how to hem pieces of clothing that don’t fit and can be used to prevent fraying if you are upcycling a piece of clothing. For the embroidery part, I looked up some basic stitches and created this pattern on my own, using the basic techniques I learned online. I initially wanted to create a larger embroidered piece, but it turned out to be a bigger project than I could handle. Because my experience with embroidery is relatively limited, I decided it would be best to scale back on the embroidery. I was inspired to do sunflowers because the shirt is a dark green color, and thought the yellow would pop out nicely.