FLOODED WOODS

This month has been rather wet and there are many flooded areas all over the country.  We are fortunate to live at the top of the hill and don't see much standing water so when I spotted this view in the woods on our regular Saturday walk I had to stop and take a photo.

The sky looked wonderful reflected in the pool and I knew this could be the inspiration for a textile art piece.

The first thing I always do is to make a sketch to try and understand the layout of the elements of the picture and to think about how to set about portraying it in fabric and stitch.

I had a handful of fabrics treated with matt acrylic medium already painted with a home made mixture of natural ochre pigments from Roussillon and acrylic medium, just waiting for their chance to be used.

I discovered the treated fabrics adhered to each other with the application of heat so first I ironed the base layer of crinkly cotton fabric to some plain white cotton using a sheet of baking parchment to protect my iron.

I then built up the picture with an assortment of scraps cut from the remains of other recent projects.  

I should say here that nothing is ever thrown away in my workroom where I have a big bag under my table where everything is put to wait for re-purposing.

I machine embroidered the first layer of trees and grasses, then cut some more trees out of a lighter brown for the foreground tree trunk.

Lots more machining to give texture and complete the picture.

The back looked rather interesting too so I decided to use a translucent iron on interfacing for the title.

I edged the trimmed picture with brown overlocking stitch then went round again stitching on a length of brown woollen yarn.

The finished picture, photographed on my pine desk, measures 28 x 20 cms.