Bringing Stitched Art to Life

Painting, Layering, and Embracing Happy Accidents

In Ruth Norbury’s workshop, stitching is just the beginning. Once the design is transferred and stitched onto fabric, the real magic happens when paint and dyes are layered over the threads to create depth, colour, and life.

This week, I explored this exciting stage of the process, one I found both exciting and slightly intimidating – adding paint to the stitched piece to bring it closer to the original photo. The idea is to use thin, quite diluted layers of paint or dye to build up the image gradually, allowing the stitching to remain visible while adding depth and nuance with colour.

For my piece, I worked with diluted (a lot) Golden Fluid Acrylics, which have a beautiful consistency – thin enough to behave like a dye when diluted, but with rich pigment that holds up well on fabric. For the areas that needed deeper contrast or fine detail, I reached for a bit of black acrylic ink – just a touch – which flowed easily and gave me just the right intensity. As I painted, I was careful to work in light layers, letting each one dry before deciding where to go next. I had to exercise a lot of patience here …

What you see above, is about three layers of colour added a bit at a time. Once these colours were in place, I used Inktense pencils to deepen shadows and add subtle shading. These water-activated pencils are ideal for layering colour precisely and blending into stitched or textured areas. Yes, I did use water. I was adding a bit here and a bit there, and the fabric already had a few layers of diluted paint on them, so I knew the water would work and not spread too much. The Inktense pencils allowed me to build up more dimension, highlight key details, and give the piece more of that painterly effect that I knew I wanted to achieve.

This stage of the process reminded me of why I love mixed media work so much – watching a stitched outline slowly transform into something vivid and lifelike through thoughtful layers of colour is incredibly satisfying. It’s not about perfection, but about expression, depth, and the joy of experimenting with materials in new ways.

Working with paints and dyes in this way is incredibly satisfying. It takes much of the fear out of the process because there’s always a way to adjust or “fix” a problem area—add another layer, soften an edge, shift a tone. Every little “oops” becomes an opportunity for rediscovery and experimentation. There are no wrongs here, just new directions. That freedom to play, revise, and explore without pressure is what makes this approach so rewarding.

The next step in the process will be to add hand stitching and detail work – maybe even some papers, to bring further texture and detail to this piece. I’m looking forward to seeing how the combination of threads and stitches continues to evolve the design. I’ll be sure to share more updates as I work through these final stages, so stay tuned!

Thanks for reading. Until I write again, keep stitching!

Ana

Slow Stitching Fabric and Lace Starter Kit