When I started the Tribonanthes dress project, I realised it would be a huge task to embroider all the illustrations on the dress in time to wear it to the conference. I decided to look at out-sourcing the stitching of the illustrations to a machine embroidery company. I asked Mike Compton at Just Sew Embroidery to digitise and embroider my illustration of Tribonanthes purpurea as a test. Here are images of my illustration and two  embroidery attempts. Although the results were amazing, there are limitations. Machine embroidery has a limited number of colours you can use with any one design. The digitising is done off-shore, so being able to discuss changes was difficult due to distance and language barriers. The complicated design layout meant that machine embroidering directly onto the velvet dress was not possible, so the embroideries needed to be done on a thin material, where the excess could be trimmed, and the embroideries made into appliqué patches to be stitched on the dress later. The test embroideries were done first on cotton poplin and then on tulle. In the end the purest in me felt it was a compromise to get a machine to do my artwork, so I needed to look at an alternative method to transfer my intricate illustrations to the dress . . . . . . . . . .