Where to find inspirational images for your next embroidery project?

How to use Instagram to find images to inspire your next creation.

Courtney McLeod, also known as Dearest Q (@dearest_q), is a Philadelphia-based textile artist who creates colorful, framed embroidery inspired by 90s fashion and pop culture illustration. Working with clean lines and minimalist compositions, Courtney produces figurative illustrations on fabric. She sells her artwork on her online store and has received commissions from Brie Larson, Peppa Pig and ‘Today’s Parent’, ‘Love Embroidery’ and ‘Koel’ magazines.

Courtney learned to embroider while studying fiber art at OCADU in Toronto. She returned to it after graduation, while working in a restaurant, as a relaxing, nomadic activity that she could easily do during her breaks. In the beginning, she embroidered a lot of plants and copied popular designs that she saw recreated by other artists. However, as her skills evolved, Courtney quickly developed her own style and found herself drawn to fashion illustration, embroidering shoes, colorful socks and women wearing vintage jeans.

As time went on, she incorporated different textures and more variety into her work and began to learn new techniques, such as needle felting and awl needle, to combine with embroidery. After quitting her job at the restaurant, Courtney started working as a seamstress at a vintage store, while managing her online store.

One of her responsibilities was to cut the bottoms of jeans to turn them into shorts, so she saved denim scraps to reuse in her projects. She started stitching illustrations of vintage denim pieces onto vintage denim pieces to create unique pieces of art that brought even more followers to her page.

To find inspiration in her creations, she reveals her tips and how to find inspiring images on Instagram.

Hashtags

Hashtags are a key part of Courtney’s research process. A hashtag she considers very reliable is #ParisianStyle.

After searching for a hashtag, she simply scrolls through the feed until she finds an image that works.

. It’s something she takes into account when researching an image, preferring when models have been photographed from unusual angles or looking sideways with their faces turned away from the camera.

personal taste

Focus on finding photos that reflect your tastes or have elements you want to recreate in your work. When researching images, Courtney always has her eye on vintage denim photos for her “denim on denim” series. She also loves images that evoke different eras of fashion (she is currently very into 60s fashion) and interesting color palettes.

Build an image bank

After finding an image she likes, Courtney saves it to a folder she created on Instagram for all the inspirational images she finds. It’s important to keep all the images you collect together so you can come back to them whenever you need a dose of inspiration and not have to scroll through hundreds of photos to find the one you want to use. .

Obtain permissions

Once you’ve selected the image you want to use for your next project, it’s important to contact the person who owns it. Make sure she’s okay with you using it, especially if you want to sell the final piece!

To do this, you can send them a direct message on Instagram explaining that you are an artist and would like to use their photo as inspiration for an artwork.

Once permission is granted, you will be able to turn the image into a line drawing that you will use to create your final piece of embroidery.

Learn how to imagine and create new designs and transfer them to fabric with Courtney in her course, Embroidering Fashion Images with the Needle Felting Technique.

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