3D Quilted Skull

Rebekah Kortokraks, aka Trixie Delite, of Brighton, UK, created this 3D quilted textile skull. She explained "The skull represents death and darkness. As the warmth and light of spring approached..., I created the flowers and butterflies which represent growth, hope and transformation." "I was inspired by Carl Jung's theory of 'the gold in the shadow': his belief that what consciousness rejects is often the stuff of life that may give it its highest value. 'One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious' - Jung. I wanted to transform the skull (an object that is generally regarded as morbid and creepy) into a thing of beauty." I use a mix of life and death in my skull artwork, so I can definitely related to how she views her creation. To see what else Rebekah is creating, check out her Blog, and Facebook page.

A look at the other side of the skull.

Anatomical Skull Embroidery

Enid Twiglet is "a fellow anatomy lover and skull enthusiast". She created this hand embroidered skull. She explained, "I am an embroidery artist based in Perth Western Australia and all of my work is hand embroidered. I only use my own drawings as patterns for my embroidery or just free hand stitch, I never use commercial patterns!" I've been doing embroidery since I was a little girl, so any embroidery submissions we get, I'm drawn to them instantly. I love that this one of kind piece is through normal cotton, vs Adida cloth, because it allows the stitches to be more free-style and follow the anatomical curves of a skull. You can see more of Enid's work on her website, Etsy shop, Facebook, and blog.

Skull Pillow

Danijela Tanaskovic created this skull pillow. I'm a big fan of embroidery and love seeing how people use this classic medium to create artwork. The skull is a fantastic example of anatomy and stitches. The addition of the flowers adds a great textural element for this decorative pillow. The design appears simple, but has a strong impact. I'd love to see more of Danijela's work!

Super Small Stitching Skull Saturday

"Mother Eagle"- (a.k.a. Katie) is making a gigantic splash here today with her miniature embroidered skulls. Here's more about Mother Eagle herself:

"I am an embroidery artist, and the skull is my perpetual muse! I have attached images of some of these pieces - both 'in progress' and finished. I am a fifth-generation needle worker and work in miniature scale, mostly in split stitch, which allows me to represent the contours of the skull and give three dimensional, and light reflecting qualities to the embroidery."

These diminutive craniums are amazingly done by hand.  A magnifying lamp and loads of patience are necessary for making such fine stitches, some as small as 1 millimeter long.  I can truly appreciate the finger cramping care you put into these, Katie.  Thanks for a super submission! 

"Tempes Fugit" Skull

Monica Pierce repays a friendly favor with this excellent embroidery skull reminding us how time flies. She also included this descriptive note, "I've been working on this embroidered skull for a few months now for a good friend of mine (named, Rad) who helped me with not one, but two websites!" "I wanted it to be as far from modern technology as I could, as a counterpoint (pun intended) to his work with computers, web design, film and photography for the NASA Space Program. I was looking for some inspiration to complete the work and found your site."

What would we have if we didn't have friends? We'd have a lot of lonely skulls out there, who would eventually recognize the common bond and find a friend out there somewhere. Monica shows her thoughtfulness by diverting from Rad's everyday world as much as possible. Rad has a rad friend, and we thank her for sharing her embroidery with us!

Stitched Sweater Skull

Holly Hann created a sugar skull applique for her best friend's cardigan sweater. This was her first and only attempt at embroidery.

For a first time doing embroidery, this is very nice. I like her use of some basic embroidery stitches to create an intricate design. Holly's best friend is a lucky person to have such an awesome hand made applique to adorn their cardigan. Hopefully, this isn't Holly's last attempt at embroidery. It's a tedious craft, but the results are worth the hours of work.

[Flashback Friday] 5.48 - Sewing Machine Embroidery Skulls

Welcome to another addition of Flashback Friday.** This year the guest editors, Tatman, Citizen Agent, and myself, Azurafae are taking turns reflecting on 17 of our personal favorite skulls from the previous four years of postings. So please join us as we visit the archives and add our additional commentary on some of the original pieces.

Dia de la Abby #25 - Free-form Embroidery Skull

I wanted to play with a free motion embroidery sewing machine foot for years. My involvement in the Skull-A-Day project gave me a great excuse to purchase the special sewing machine foot and use it to make a skull. As you all know, I love Dia de los Muertos, so I created a simple style sugar skull with accompanying stylized marigolds. I've been machine sewing since I was 12, so the majority of the sewing, though free motion, wasn't terribly difficult. Sewing the details on the skull was more challenging, but sewing slowly gave me a lot of control.

Dia de la Abby #46: Floral Skull Quilt Square

When it came around time for me to make my quilt square for the Skull-A-Day and Becky's Fund Quilt Project, I used a combination of the new free motion embroidery skill I had learned, and older embroidery and beading skills that I'd been building on since I was 4 years old. Since the machine embroidery was over a piece of fabric, after sewing, I stiffened the fabric and sealed the fraying edges with clear acrylic paint. This is one of my favorite embroidery pieces to create, since it combines a variety of techniques of a skill I'm proud to do.

317. Sewn Skull

I was aware that Noah had created this skull using a sewing machine. I asked him one day if he did it with the same type of foot that I had used. He hadn't. He used the standard sewing machine foot and forced the fabric through the feed dogs. If you aren't familiar with what "feed dogs" are, they are the metal ridges that help feed the fabric through the sewing area of a sewing machine, by gripping onto the fabric pressed against the sewing foot. This makes drastically changing the straight direction of the fabric while sewing, difficult. Looking at Noah's piece again, I notice the almost etch-a-sketch feel to it, since the sewing was done by pulling the fabric in a non-straight direction while sewing, and using the backwards button to form long zig zag stitches. This is very difficult to do, so I commend him on being able to do this and creating a successful image of a skull. When doing embroidery with the specialty foot, the feed dogs are down, so there is no traction while sewing and you can freely sew without an encouraged direction.

 **Flashback Friday was a weekly countdown of the fan selected top 52 skulls of Skull-A-Day 1.0. Each week during year 3.0 The Skullmaster posted the original skull along with some additional commentary in order from lowest to highest rated, with the #1 skull appearing in the last week of year 3.0, all 52 can be found here. During year 4.0 the editors had their chance to countdown their favorites Azurafae HERE, Citizen Agent HERE, and Tatman HERE.

Framed Skulls

Self described- Crazy artist, doll designer, accessories maker, and DIY addict- from Paris, France CocoFlower ** sent us this pair of crafty skull embroidery on little picture frame with lace.



Flossy C says:

I have a certain affinity for the non-traditional fine arts, so it is always a please to see when some examples arrive in our in box. Thank you for sharing these wonderful pieces of your crafty work with us, as well as directing us to the prolific art that you feature on your blog.

** Non French speakers: see the Google translation of the blog HERE.

Dia de la Abby #67: Embroidered Skull Ornament

Since it's the season for holiday celebrations, this is the perfect time to make a skull ornament.

I've wanted to do a hand embroidered skull for a while, but since I've been doing embroidery since I was a young child, I wanted a challenge. I choose to make this embroidered skull through layers of bridal tulle and stiffen it with a simple glue mixture. This was so the skull would be delicate looking, but sturdy. This is meant to be a holiday ornament, but could be framed or used as an applique. This thankfully wasn't too challenging, so I am able to provide you all with a tutorial.


Every other Thursday in the 5.0 year, I will post my own Dia de la Abby creations   Every Thursday in the 4.0 year, I posted my Dia de la Abby creations and occasionally tutorials with instructions on how I made my pieces. Hopefully you feel inspired by my posts just as I was by Noah's Skull-A-Day 1.0 daily project. Need more of me than just a weekly dose, follow me on  Facebook, Google+ and/or Twitter.

Dia de la Abby #46: Floral Skull Quilt Square

This week, I've been busy working on my quilt square for our Skull Quilt Project. It was inspired by my #12: Skull with Flowers.

I'll be adding more details to my quilt square, but it's close to being done. To create the skull, I cut out a skull shape from a flower print fabric and used free motion machine embroidery to sew it to the black fabric. I have a large fabric stash, but most of it is printed fabrics. To create fabric in the colors I needed for the yellow flower and leaves, I painted beige fabric with acrylic paint. This changes the color of the fabric, makes it stiffer and controls fraying. To make the red flowers sparkle, I used an extreme glitter acrylic paint. To cover the center of the yellow flower, I used black PVC, sequins and beads. To cover the center of the red flowers, I used sequins and beads.The pink flower and vines are made with ribbons. The butterfly is from a printed fabric. I cut around the butterfly and painted it with a clear matte acrylic varnish, to prevent fraying. The purple flowers at the top, are French knots made with embroidery floss. The reuse of materials and fabrics through out the piece, helps tie together the different elements. I am enjoying using some old skills for a great project.


If you would like to participate in The Skull-A-Day and Becky's Fund Quilt Project, please mail us your 12"x12" skull quilt square. I recommend using cotton as your base, just so when I sew the blocks together to make quilts, sewing will be easier for me and I won't melt any fabrics while ironing the seams. Please leave an inch unembellished boarder. This is also to make sewing and ironing easier. This means you will have a total of 10" x 10"of working space. If your piece is anything like mine or the other submissions, that does give you a lot of room to be creative. Thanks for participating. We all really appreciate it!

Send your finished skull quilt squares to:

Skull-A-Day

PO Box 73236

Richmond, VA 23235

On a note sent with the piece, please include:

Your name

Your city, state and/or country

Your email - I will email you when your block arrives

If you have any questions about the project, feel free to email me at abby@skulladay.com

The deadline for us to receive the skull blocks is Saturday, May 28, 2011. This is so we can sew the quilts in time Skull Appreciation Day. The quilts will be auctioned off at and after the June 4th event. Proceeds from these quilts will go to Becky's Fund, which is an organization that helps victims of domestic violence.

If you aren't the quilt square type person, or want something to do something a bit different for the event, make a piece of Mail Art. These will be on display at the event.



Every week in the 4.0 year, I will post my own Dia de la Abby posts as well as a tutorial with instructions on how I made my piece. Hopefully you feel inspired by my posts just as I was by Noah's Skull-A-Day 1.0 daily project. Need more of me than just a weekly dose, follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook.

Dia de la Abby #25 - Free-form Embroidery Skull

I wanted to challenge myself with this one, by finding a way to combine my love of sugar skulls with embroidery and machine sewing. This is my first attempt at free-form machine embroidery. It's not perfect, but overall, I'm happy with it. This was also spawned by a curiosity of how Noah could have done this skull and this skull. I think we did our different, as I used a special foot for the machine and lowered the feed dogs of the machine. For more information on how I made this piece, go to the tutorial.

Every week in the 4.0 year, I will be post my own Dia de la Abby posts as well as a tutorial with instructions on how I made my piece. Hopefully you feel inspired by my posts just as I was by Noah's Skull-A-Day 1.0 daily project. Need more of me than just a weekly dose, follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook.

Needle Art Skulls

First up is Alexandra who told us: “This is a project I did when I was first trying to learn some basic embroidery techniques.”


Next is Peggy from Lemon Grove (San Diego), California said: “My sister Naida insists that I crochet skulls.”

Last is Frankie in New Zealand sent us this needlepoint example:


Balloon C says:

No matter what tool you used to create with the results are still the same- excellent! I really like this interaction of techniques that each of you specialize in or explored in order to make an original work of art. Thank you all for taking the time to submit your work.

Embroidered Skull

Art Teacher Robin New moves to the head of the class with this embroidered skull sewn onto found vintage embroidery. She works with her husband on these under the name "Super Stitched Chaos".



I'm sure all of your students at Clark-Moores Middle School will be thrilled to see their teacher's work. Hey, maybe you can get some of them interested in skull art with this month's "Back To Skull" contest. Kudos to you for teaching today's youth about the art of tomorrow.

3 Skulls, 2 Textures, 1 Great Idea

Boston artist Alycia Garcia presents us with a mixture of mediums in her 3 skulls. Ink and embroidery make a fine combination for this trio.



The use of 2 mediums in one piece is a great idea. Anyone else feeling inspired?

Send To Phone

Faux Embroidery Skull

Dallas area artists Tom Sale and Judy Vetter, a.k.a. The Tom & Judy show, bring us a faux embroidery skull full of vibrant colors. What is faux embroidery you might ask? It's a non stitched thread piece on dyed vintage fabric. Tom & Judy are collaborative artists who use their own art skills combined together to make unique pieces. A real team effort.



I really like the multi-colored look of this piece. Of course, it does remind me of another thread skull done long ago, but the colors of this piece give it a whole new life.

Send To Phone