I have always loved the work of Vincent Van Gogh. I’ve recently been so inspired by the work of other embroidery artists who have reimagined classic famous works of art using embroidery, particularly Starry Night. The strokes in Van Gogh’s paintings lend themselves well to embroidery stitches. I thought it might be fun to try my own version on a pair of jeans.

I wasn’t sure where this project would lead me but I decided to start with a loose painting on the bottom of a pair of jeans. I painted a white rectangle with acrylic textile paint. If I just painted directly on the jeans without the white undercoat it would fade out since the jeans are so dark.

Next, I painted a very loose rendering of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. I started with the black outlines first then added the colors. I added black again in places where it got painted over. That’s the great thing about acrylics . You can keep letting it dry and painting over it. You can also use your hairdryer to speed the drying process.

I continued to add some details…..

This was a really fun experiment. The longer I observed the painting, the more colors and details I saw. It was very hard to recreate a piece that, initially, looked a little simpler than I thought. Guess that’s part of the genius. It is a wonderful exercise to truly be able to appreciate a masterpiece.

Now to bring in the threads! I used my color palette to pick threads. I have to say it was pretty difficult using reference pictures from the internet. They all look so different depending on where you are viewing them from (different screens), who took the pictures (different lighting, etc), and renderings. They all have completely different colors so I just kept playing around with it. I just wanted to capture the idea of it since the image is so easily recognizable.