Doodle sewing

I am combining my interest in doodle drawing with free motion machine sewing.  I used a drawing I had done of a tree trunk (another that seems to have the pattern of the bark going up the tree from left to right) and traced the main outlines onto soluble fabric.  Then I tried doodling it in a similar way using the sewing machine.

Surprisingly, it is not much slower than the drawing.  One of the main drawbacks is that you can't alway see where the needle is going, as you move backwards and forwards.  But that didn't matter to me in this instance.
I need to practise more and see if I can come up with more patterns that will hold together when the soluble fabric is gone. I couldn't get it quite the same as the pen doodling, not that I was trying all that hard, but I was quite pleased with the look.

Then I dissolved the backing.  It shrank much more than I expected.  I used rayon thread this time and now I will have to do some samples as much the same as I can make them to see what the difference is between cotton and rayon.  I might even lash out and get some polyester and see how that compares.

The shrinkage means that the darker, more heavily sewn areas, are quite dense and my variations in tone are less clear. Oh well, live and learn.

The final piece over the picture I had traced it from.  Quite a lot of shrinkage.