My project for course: Embroidered Pet Portraits: The Thread Painting Technique

Here is the project that I completed for my Domestika course!

This portrait was stitched with DMC and Cosmo thread with a size 10 John James needle. I used kona cotton in the color Old Green to compliment the cats eyes.

I am stitching in an 7" embroidery hoop even though he'll be framed in a 6" hoop. This allows me to stitch all of the way to the edge of the frame.

After carefully choosing my reference photo I made a pattern to work from. I like to make my patterns similar to a paint by numbers so I can easily stitch them in with color when it's time to embroider. Here you can see my reference photo vs. my pattern.

Next, I chose some colors that I saw in the fur and got started on the embroidery. I like to start on the neck and chest area so I can get comfortable with the colors I chose and see how they blend together before I move on to a more important area like the face.

Before starting on the face I stitched his ears.

Next, I moved on to his eyes, nose, chin, and cheeks! There were a lot of little stitches here.

I finished filling out the sides of his face before moving on to his forehead. I really like the lighting across his face and how it's almost opposite with the shadows and highlights on each side.

Finally, I added some whiskers and little stars to accent his portrait. I moved his embroidery to a 6" hoop and framed it with a frame from ACMS Needlework Shop.

You can see a comparison between my reference photo and my finished embroidery! The reference is on the left and the embroidery is on the right.

Believe it or not, this is the SAME cat! The cat on top was made as a Christmas gift for my sister in 2018, and I got to embroider his portrait again as the project for my Domestika course.⁣⁣
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I wanted to share a little about why I chose a black cat for the project and why I think my course is a perfect place to start if you’re wanting to learn how to make your own embroidered pet portraits.⁣⁣
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Since the black fur color palette is limited, it gives you more time to focus on the actual thread painting technique. This sets you up for success and gives you the building blocks to be able to embroider any sort of fur. It also gives you a good foundation for understanding how to capture shadows and highlights within the facial structure and body. It’s a perfect place for beginners to start because it’s not too overwhelming with info and colors.⁣⁣
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One thing that has drastically changed my skill level over the years is adding more details to my initial pattern. I also put more effort into capturing what I saw in the reference while I was stitching. With pet portraits, it’s more important to capture the look of the fur than it is to get the colors perfectly matched. Even if you have perfect colors, if the fur doesn’t follow how it naturally looks on the animal then your portrait won’t look realistic. Again, this ties back to my first point, which is that practicing with a limited color palette like black fur is so helpful when learning how to capture those fur paths!⁣⁣
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I've been stitching pet portraits since 2014 and I've learned so much along the way. Skip the years of trial and error and let me teach you all I know!⁣⁣
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