Making of 'Girl'...

 

 

'Girl' was a particularly fun word to make because its so tough to hand-sew leather that doing so feels like such a triumph!

My usual approach when creating a textile piece like this is to first make a paper template which I then lay onto the fabric to cut and hold in place with masking tape. This was, as I found out a bad idea with this particular slightly patent pink leather peeled with the masking tape, making the surrounding areas not quite so nice, oops!

 

 

     My approach was to sew a little bit of the orange jersey into a padded tube-like thing and then to sew that short length around the edge of the pink leather using a visible back stitch. I mainly did it this way so that I could feel like I was achieving something. Otherwise I would have finished all the orange edging but without really finishing anything....

  With the letter 'i' I was faced with the challenge of how to attach the dot above the main body of the letter. For this I chose to space the leather pieces by meeting the orange edging in the middle and attaching both parts of the 'i' together in this way.

The very final step was to conceal my stitching with a nice little bit of pink felt cut to just below the size each letter so as not to protrude beyond the edge. Lovely as the pink felt is, it was my plan for it to remain undetectable from the front, so that, apart from anyone looking at this and hearing my confession, no one will know of my need to hide messy work...