World through the eye of a needle

She had wanted to capture the sunset at Cottesloe Beach in Perth, Australia, but the battery on her mobile phone had run out.

In a moment of ingenuity, Ms Teresa Lim, 24, turned to needle and thread to capture the moment with embroidery.

She said: "I remembered that I had to sew very fast because the sun was already setting. It took me about half an hour to an hour to complete the artwork."

The full-time illustrator and textile designer stitches artworks of iconic landmarks from her travels and posts them in "Sew Wanderlust", an online collection.

Her works were recently featured on the websites of several overseas publications, including the Daily Mail and The Guardian.

Ms Lim carries her supply of needles, threads and fabrics with her everywhere, using them to chronicle her adventures to landmarks such as Big Ben in London and Ha Long Bay in Vietnam.

She said: "If it's a short trip of about a week, I'll take five to seven canvases. But if I'm travelling for a month, I'll take at least 15."

"I take more thread with me as well, because I don't want to run into the situation where I can't stitch an artwork because I don't have that colour that I need."

Ms Lim started doing embroidery in 2012 when she had to take a module on the subject while studying Fashion Design and Textiles in Lasalle College of the Arts.

THERAPEUTIC

She said: "I really liked it because it was very therapeutic for me."

As Ms Lim did not study art in secondary school and junior college, her days in Lasalle were a learning journey.

"I had to practise drawing every day. And learning about all these design principles was really intriguing," she said.

"If you're passionate about something, you will be able to enjoy the things you learn."

Ms Lim, who usually travels with her Lasalle College friends, would often sketch the places they visited. But she said it did not give her the same satisfaction as doing embroidery.

She said: "The stroke of the pen when it meets the paper was too fast. So I prefer embroidery because the satisfaction was very literal, like I was etching the vision onto the fabric itself."

Her artworks are done on round canvases which are 10cm in diameter, and each artwork takes about two hours to complete.

She also makes it a point to plan her days so that she will be able to capture things when the sun is still up.

"It's difficult to see details when it's dark. I like details and they are very important in my aesthetic," she said.

While none of her artworks was challenging to create, Ms Lim remembered that stitching the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin had been difficult for her.

She said: "I thought it was easy at first because the shapes were all regular. But it turns out that was the difficult part. The shapes must be proportionate and the lines must be straight."

Ms Nikki Lim, 24, a Lasalle College graduate who has travelled with Ms Lim, said that she likes watching her do her embroidery when they are on holiday.

"I think it's cool and interesting to watch her do embroidery, because I mostly sketch landscapes when I'm travelling with Teresa," she said.

"We normally finish our artworks around the same time, because normally I'm done with the line art and painting of colours for my sketches. Sometimes I can leave the painting till later, but for Teresa, she needs the light to see the details."

When asked if she could name her favourite piece out of all the 13 that she has created, Ms Teresa Lim said all of them were her favourites.

She said: "I simply can't choose one, every single one of them is very memorable to me."

Ms Lim's artworks are so precious to her that she will not consider selling them.

She said: "There were people who asked to buy my collection, but I would never part with them. They're too personal to me." "Whenever I look at the artworks, I can still see the exact scene in my head."

lwenqi@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on Feb 21, 2015.
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