Gallery of past work

Wednesday 11 September 2019

In Bloom in Cheltenham

The Brunel Broderers’ exhibition is now over and work has been taken down. Sadly, we were only at this excellent, well-visited gallery for a week.

Three of my pieces are shown below as they were hung in the gallery.


The work was derived following my currently preferred process. I manipulated the photos shown in previous posts using Photoshop Elements and printed the resulting images onto light cotton before stitching.

This time, for the main piece one metre long, I added in an extra step as I wanted to apply the images to a cotton backing before stitching to give more texture. I chose to use a length from an old white damask table cloth of my mother’s which was too badly stained for use. I applied each of the printed images to Bondaweb and cut out each one carefully before applying it to the cloth. This seemed to give more life to the piece as well as being the only practical way to get all five images onto the cloth.

I then stitched with the chosen restricted palette to develop the imagery of the piece. I used French knots and satin stitch in the main and stretched it around a shallow artist’s canvas.


5 comments:

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    1. Very many thanks, Lin. They provoked much conversation in the exhibition which was gratifying.

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  2. I can't say enough good things about these, especially the long one. That shadow effect "makes" all these pieces and the use of the damask tablecloth on the long piece makes it particularly special. No wonder they became such conversation pieces!

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    1. Very many thanks, Sheila. As well as helping with composition, the shadows were a device used to suggest Catherine de Medici’s ruthless and troubling past - the ghosts perhaps of those who died on her watch, if not directly by her own hand.

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    2. Oh, that's right - her gardens and your research into them and her were your inspiration. Another level of interpreting . . .

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