Paulina Bartnik’s embroidered brooches
Paulina Bartnik is a Polish textile artist based in Lublin. Her work amazes equally art lovers, textile crafters and bird enthusiasts. She creates beautifully detailed bird brooches using techniques of needle felting and embroidery. Paulina graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, but she is mostly self-taught in the field of embroidery.
Her interest in the stitches started at her young age when she came across a book about Polish folk embroidery. Joyful colours and different stitches inspired Paulina to later create her own fascinating art. She said, “Looking at the felt bird I remembered the Polish embroidery I’d seen in the book and on traditional attire. I thought that the combination of soft felt with the distinct, sharp lines of thread would look perfect. The more I thought about it I realised that, because threads and stitch can imitate feathers so well, the felt itself would no longer need to be visible in the works.”
Paulina uses solid, not shaded, thread and works with the finest needles possible, such as John James’ needles for bead embroidery. Although she uses all sorts of thread, mostly her choice is common polyester threads. Doing the stitches in different lengths and directions, Paulina successfully creates impressions of various birds feathers. She embroidered various bird brooches featuring owls, sparrows, ravens, doves, finches, parrots… Occasionally, Paulina would accept commissions via her Etsy shop. Her rabbits, wolves and dogs are all minutely done with beautiful and natural shades of fur.
Paulina says about her method, “Firstly, I make a shape from a piece of wool with a technique called dry felting. Dry felting is completed by using a special felting needle to prod wool until it becomes the thickness/texture needed. I then paint with a needle on the felt, apply colours and in the end embroider finer details.”
To find out more about Paulina’s embroidery, please visit her Instagram page. Through her shop, Conieco she crafts the most detailed threaded brooches, mainly of birds.
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