At the moment I’m working on several large panels which I hope will eventually give me some interesting results, but unfortunately they take such a long time to digitise and stitch that I don’t have many finished designs to post here on a weekly basis. So I think I’ll have a small break – maybe until after the Christmas holidays – so I can catch up on some of these big projects. But whatever happens I’ll be back in the first week in January with the next free design
One of the large panels I’m working on involves a lot of vases with flowers in them, so I’ve been playing around with ideas of how to present flowers in vases. First, there’s the obvious approach – the flowers are stitched out and then a simple fabric shape is appliqueed over the stems to represent the vase.
Flowers with a simple appliqueed fabric 'vase'
This one uses hand printed fabric for the vase. The whole design is quite large and so had to be stitched in two sections – first the flowers, and then the vase
Second, I thought that transparent glass could be represented by Mylar appliqueed over the stems.
Flowers with a Mylar 'vase'
This one didn’t scan well – in this image the Mylar looks very strange, but in real life it’s honestly a lot better. In this case, because the ‘glass’ is transparent, the stems had to be digitised even where they run behind the appliqueed Mylar
Finally, I liked the idea of subtly coloured ‘glass’ and so used coloured chiffon for the appliqueed vases.
Vases of coloured chiffon
The red and blue are the natural colours of the fabric, but the purple was painted onto a white chiffon. Again, because the stems are visible, they have to be digitised and stitched, and can’t just be cut off at the rim of the vase. In this stitchout, the ‘vases’ are placed on top of a background of fabric with frayed edges, to represent a tablecloth.
All three methods worked quite well, and in the final panel I will probably use all three to represent different vases
I wish all of you a happy and peaceful holiday season, and I’ll be back after the festivities with some more ideas and some more free designs