Susan’s Poppy
My sewing machine resides at my studio located in the Butte Silver Bow Arts Foundation a couple blocks from home. It snowed a lot again this past week, so I decided to stay home and make some small handstitched pieces.
Based on a photograph of an Icelandic Poppy taken in my best friend’s garden, this 6″x6″ art quilt is one of them.
I’ve been thinking about the way I work and have come to realize that I very seldom make anything in a square format. And I don’t know why that is, unless perhaps I am so used to seeing the world through a camera viewfinder that I just default to that general aspect ratio.
So, I pulled the original photo into Photoshop and cropped it to be a square. I then changed it to grayscale and increased the contrast. I printed several copies and used them to cut the work into pattern pieces for fusing.
Because I wanted to preserve the 3D layering of the petals, I was very careful to number them to keep track of what I was doing. Petals 10, 7, and 4 were the first to be applied to the background. I then layered the other petals on top based on the original photo.
The piece is finished with hand embroidery around the petals and French knots in the center. A small amount of hand quilting was added to the stems and background. The edges are closed with a blanket stitch.
Update: Susan’s Poppy is now in the collection of Debra Eisert.
New Series: Blocks « Notes from Cynthia’s Studio
Sep 17, 2009 @ 19:48:05
[...] other elements, and I want to take some time to really work through some of these thoughts. As noted previously, I don’t usually work in a square format, so this is part of my challenge in this series as [...]
Susan’s Poppy
Jan 03, 2012 @ 22:34:32
[...] about the creation of this piece on my blog. Share this: « Land of Enchantment #3: Autumn » Arriving in [...]