Clip Art in Play – Pat Bliss interprets Noelle Dahlen

A few years ago while formulating the Clip Art of Machine Embroidery series I had the pleasure of getting to know master machine embroiderer, Pat Bliss. I called upon her for technical guidance about the selection and processing of images for those books. Pat lives here in Santa Fe, and beside her many other talents and interests she is a machine embroiderer and pattern-maker extraordinaire.

Pat rocks. She rocks so hard that we started calling her the Jimi Hendrix of machine embroidery. In retrospect, and based on Pat's own assessment, I'd actually like to change that moniker–she's the Jeff Beck of machine embroidery. To my ear Hendrix was all passion and inspiration, Jeff Beck, on the other hand, was this amazing combination of inspiration and execution. There's something of the 'empassioned engineer' about his playing; so it is with Pat. She even told me once that she sees the task of creating a good pattern as an engineering problem.
    So this past summer I gave Pat a bunch of Christmas clip art to evaluate for another machine embroidery project (it's still under wraps so I cannot divulge many details). She ended up taking a set of Noelle Dahlen's lovely little Christmas characters, and turned them into some fantastic embroideries.

Here are Noelle's originals.....

And here's a sampling of Pat's sewn out embroideries.....

Check out the collection Merry Christmas on DoverPictura.com for more contemporary 

Christmas clip art!