Portrait embroidery - new art in hand sewing

By Mohd Afiq Zulkifli

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 3 (Bernama) -- Embroidery is often done on blankets, hats and blouses with various patterns and motifs. 

Over time, the art of sewing has evolved with the motifs and patterns not just confined to flowers and objects, but also potraits as can be seen through the works of Siti Nur Amalina Mohamad Sukri, who holds a Master’s of Science in Nanotechnology from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.

Siti Nur Amalina, 29, said she chose portrait embroidery because it can immortalise important events that happen in life and also depicts the expression of a person's face in the form of interesting hand embroidery as beautiful memories.

She started dabbling in the art of embroidery in September 2020 and has since produced over 150 pieces of embroidery work, half of which were portraits.

"Initially, I wasn't good at sewing, but the implementation of the Movement Control Order (MCO) during the COVID-19 pandemic got me to try my hand at something new and I chose to do sewing.

"I came across an embroidery kit on the Internet that allows us to learn basic sewing techniques. Since then, I started learning from embroidery tutorials on YouTube and over time my embroidery works were successful and also attracted the attention of netizens when I shared them on social media," she told Bernama recently.

Siti Nur Amalina said she produces three types of portrait embroidery,  namely the fully stitched hoop, the coloured potrait embroidery and the outlined portrait.

"In terms of difficulty,  the fully stitched hoop is the most difficult and takes a long time to complete, because it involves a lot of details,” she said,  adding it needs a lot of patience to produce quality portrait embroidery.

Siti Nur Amalina said to create a portrait embroidery, she would get a photo from her customer and then sketch an illustration through a drawing application on the phone.

After that is done, the illustration will be printed on sticker paper using a normal printing machine before it is pasted to the fabric that allows an embroidery to be done, she said.

Her embroidery work is sold at a price starting from RM150 depending on the size and design.

“The more difficult aand larger the design, the more time it takes to complete," said Siti Nur Amalina who has mastered 15 types of stitches to produce portrait embroidery.

On her plans,  Siti Nur Amalina, from Lembah Keramat here, said she hoped to open an embroidery class one day.

-- BERNAMA