18/18 Pizza
Every week I
think, what’s caught my eye? What have I seen recently that’s a bit different?
It doesn’t (quite!) always have to be nature…
A trip to the
city, a rare meal out – pizza! Pizza Express Vegan Giardiniera to be precise.
Artichokes, olives, mushrooms, red onion, vegan “mozzarella”.
So here’s a
little piece inspired by (not meant to look too much like!) a pizza. It could
possibly be a brooch?
18/19 Primrose
lace
OK, so I’ve done
several versions of primroses before… but they’re everywhere right now, I just
have to play with them again!
For something a
bit different, I tried an open, lacy piece – entirely in free machining on
soluble fabric.
18/20 Whelk shell
This spiral
design came from an unusually colourful whelk shell I found on the beach –
looking down the whorls from the apex.
I used the
Embellisher to make a background, first meshing together loose weave cotton and
scrim then adding a rough spiral of white and purple wool fibres.
Then I just had
fun with hand embroidery in various purple, yellow and cream threads – running,
stem and chain stitches and some French knots.
18/21 Bluebells
I think bluebells
are my favourite wildflowers... though I might waver when foxgloves and primroses
are about. It’s not the individual plants but the effect of hundreds, thousands
of them - that fabulous blue-purple carpet. One of the special treats of a UK
spring!
So it was the
density of flowers I wanted to capture with this little sample, and I decided
the only way to get that was to overlay several layers of embroidery.
I free machined
three strips of stems/leaves and flowers on Aquasol, using Madeira Rayon 40,
ranging from 3cm to 4.cm tall. After dissolving and drying I overcast the
layers together at the base.
18/22 Cape Daisy
I love to photograph flowers really close up, the centres are often fascinating. This one is a Cape Daisy.
It led to a little sample combining machine and hand embroidery. I pencilled the outline on white cotton fabric, and coloured the centre yellow with fabric crayons. Then I free machined the petals using grey-purple for their outlines and variegated lilac filling.
In the centre I stitched French knots in dark purple perle 8 and golden yellow stranded
cotton, with a few
purple straight stitches added to fill gaps.
