Malin Lager: ‘Oil paintings’ with silk thread

Inspired by lichen-covered rocks, wet cobblestone streets and the expressive faces of her family and friends, Swedish textile artist Malin Lager creates highly detailed ‘paintings’ with her favourite 1984 Pfaff sewing machine. Her pictures, crafted of meticulously stitched layers of fabric and thread, are so lifelike they are often mistaken for oil paintings.

Malin begins with lustrous, coloured strands of fine silk which she builds up in a many-hued cascade of tiny darning threads over a patched fabric background, similar to the traditional method of underpainting in painted art. The free motion foot on her sewing machine is expertly guided to create colour and composition in an image with shading and highlights that give it its photographic-like expression.

Working from her own photographs, the process is slow but enables her to feel her way to creating the texture that makes her works of art so astonishing.

Descending from four generations of artists, she was always supported in her creative expression, though the use of her sewing machine for textile art was a surprise discovery.