'That’ll Need Stitching' now has its own website!
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'That’ll Need Stitching' now has its own website! 〰️
Dab Hands : That’ll Need Stitching
Working together to create an anatomical embroidered sculpture.
A collaborative community artwork embroidering the drawings of consultant hand surgeon, Donald Sammut FRCS, FRCS (Plast)
As of the end of April 2021, kits are no longer available. Thank you!
Hello! Thanks for your interest in being involved in creating part of what I hope will be a really beautiful and fascinating artwork. The piece will be exhibited as part of the Dab Hands exhibition at Manchester Museum as it reopens after an extensive refurbishment in 2022.
I am interested in helping you to create an artwork that celebrates the skills and dexterity which are developed when one spends time doing craft activities and how they are reflected, both in movement and skill acquisition, in surgical practice. This part of the project will be based upon the anatomical hand drawings of hand surgeon and artist, Mr Donald Sammut. Donald uses drawing in his medical practice to gain a greater understanding of his patients’ specific difficulties and as a teaching aid for anatomy and surgical techniques. His beautiful drawings can be seen at www.donaldsammut.com/portfolio.
The 1st dorsal interosseous muscle ©Donald Sammut
How will the project work?
School groups are taking part, as are members of The Embroiderers’ Guild, medical students and health care professionals. I will be sending out about three hundred individual kits, so if you don’t fall into these groups, send me an email and I’ll see if I have a kit for you too. Email me at lucy@lucysart.co.uk. I will need your postal address. If I can, I will send you a kit.
Included in the free kit will be everything that you need to complete the embroidery including:
A 5” embroidery hoop which will have one of Donald’s drawings printed onto the fabric using ‘Sticky Fabri-Solvy’, a printable fabric stabiliser that can be dissolved away with water when the work is finished
A paper print of Donald’s drawing with information about the part of the anatomy you will be stitching
The embroidery threads (known as flosses), and a needle threader
A stamped, addressed envelope so you can send the completed work back to me
In terms of techniques or stitches, my only request is that you make a fine black outline over Donald’s drawn lines using split stitch or backstitch. If you are new to embroidery and don’t know these stitches or how to thread a needle, don’t worry! I will be posting ‘how-to’ videos below that should be helpful.
When it comes to adding colour to the image, please use the flosses provided and your own choice of stitches. If you have colour-fast threads in similar colours that you want to use instead, that’s ok. If you would like to have a specific skin tone in your image, let me know and I’ll send the right thread out. Don’t feel that you have to cover every last bit of the printed drawing, if you feel that your image or stitch choice doesn’t call for it. If you would prefer to work on one of the simpler images, please let me know.
Please feel free to add a background pattern of your choice. Here, you can let your creativity take the lead! If you specialise in techniques such as goldwork or blackwork that require specific threads or beads, please let me know and I’ll include them in your kit.
When I have received the returned work, they will be stitched together to create a 3D sculptural model of a hand, with the embroidered ‘skin’ illustrating the internal anatomy of the hand. I hope that you like that idea! Your names will be displayed alongside the sculpture (if you don’t object to that-let me know if you would prefer not to be on the list). Thanks again for your interest!
My test piece (made without a printed canvas). Work in progress.