It's a while since my last post so I thought I had better do a bit of catching up.
I posted the January challenge earlier in the year and here are the next four months pieces, starting with February. The theme was ancient Rome and Greece so I thought of the Greek goddesses and Aphrodite came to mind along with the Acropolis in the city of Athens. I found an image which I traced onto a piece of sky printed fabric and as I wanted the picture to be a standard 30 x 20 cms I decided to add the greek key pattern along the top and bottom and machine embroidered then coloured with inktense pencils. For my goddess I have a photo of my granddaughter dressed like this which I copied onto piece of flesh coloured linen then added her clothes and hair with applique and embroidery. I cut her out carefully and hand appliqueed her to thebackground and finally made a frame with a navy heart printed fabric.
The subject for March was the Mediaeval era and I started thinking of some of the ancient castles we've visited here in France. Carcassonne is one of my favourites so I found one of my drawings and transferred it to some beige linen before machine embroidering the outlines, then colouring with my Inktense crayons which I wetted with fabric medium. The figure is an applique of different silk fabrics with hand embroidered gold threads and details, then the picture finished with a frame of batik in deep red and russet colours.
April's theme was the Renaissance and after studying some paintings of the era I remembered I had an old duvet cover printed with just the right kind of images for my background. For my figure Elizabeth I was the perfect example with her fabulous clothes, all appliqued in silks and lace with red yarn for her hair and red beads stitched for decoration. The frame is a lovely gold printed royal blue, ideal for the regal image.
The latest theme for May is the 1920s and I soon came up with a plan using a beautiful art Deco fabric as the frame and also printed on paper in light blue for the background. I overprinted the blue art deco with an image traced from a costumes through the ages book then layered a piece of white organdie, then the print and then some blue coloured netting to complete the background.
Here I have machine embroidered most of the ladies in black thread but my machine suddenly stopped working in mid flow.
You can see from the back of the picture that I had to stop on the third ladie's arm. Fortunately Bob is an electronics engineer and after completely dismantling and reassembling the machine she is now in perfect working order. He said how lucky I am to have such a useful husband! I'm lucky too that my beloved Bernina has lasted 30 years with no trouble at all till I overworked her!
So the rest of the picture was done with hand stitching to make the costume of the main character and here are the ingredients before I started. She was traced onto organdie backed with fine interfacing and various scraps appliqueed for her coat, dress and hat with beads added later for a necklace.
The finished front of the piece measuring 30 x 20 cms with the picture stitched to the frame.
For the reverse I embroidered the caption on organdie so that the stitching on the back was just visible and added a couple of cut out shapes from another fabric scrap.
I have now joined the first 4 pieces with split rings passed through eyelets on each corner and hung them on a net curtain hanger in my studio.
I'm thinking maybe this will turn into a much larger wall hanging so watch this space!
