I wanted to share one of my latest projects with you which I made as part of the Aurifil Artisan September embroidery challenge.

Ive always loved Aurfil 50 weight for its precision and strength but I wanted to showcase how it can be used to capture details and texture in a free motion textile piece.

I choose to make a portrait of a Vixen and cub as we have had a few Fox visits to our garden over the last few weeks.

I began with a very loose under painting with acrylic inks and then needle felted in the base colors so that I had and initial layer of texture in place.

Then its time for the fun part of the process, thread painting

One of the most used color in this make is no 4150 Its a beautiful variegated tone which ranges from pale yellow to an ochre orange.

Making a piece such as this requires an huge range of tonal changes to capture all of the different tones of fur on the foxes and so these variegated threads are a great place to start.

I used at least another 20 colors but that's the great thing about Aurifil when your a thread artist, they have a tone for everything. :)

I cut my subjects away from their backing fabric about half way through each make. I do this so I can really hone in on the tonal qualities and details of the subject. I also love that when they're reattached to their backing fabric they stand out and have a 3 dimensional quality.

I painted in the darker tones of the back drop using Acrylic inks and then stitched the foxes in place using the amazing Aurifil Mono-filament.

Mon-filament is fantastic as its an invisible thread and incredibly strong so it can cope with all the layers of fabric felt and threads without interfering with the details of the final piece.