Thread Painting

Poppies – Getting There

Posted by

2

Made quite a bit of progress today – having decided to use the blue/green fabric for the border, I chose some blue/teal embroidery thread and overstitched in the dark green areas and while it isn’t sharp in the photo the stitching does tie in the blue of the border.

Thread Painting and Borders Almost Completed

Then I began working on the poppies – finished the centres, did some thread painting on the petals (may still do a bit more), added a bit of red stitching to the opening flower buds. Then I added the wide outer border and blind stitched the mitred corners.

Now I need to cut a piece of muslin for the back, and a couple of strips from the outer border fabric to do a hidden binding.

Poppies – Original Photo

Above is the original photo that served as inspiration for the textile piece. I think I’ve come close to capturing the vibrance of the poppies at the peak of their beauty.

Now to finish the piece and move on to the next one.

 

Poppies – A Better Border

Posted by

2

I was at the fabric shop this afternoon to pick up some thread to thread paint the poppies – I didn’t have any good peach/orange red tones in my collection – I want to transform the blue-red colour of the appliqué to a more orange red, and while I was there I happened across a largish wall panel half of which was a blurred blend of blues/greens which I think will work better than the green fabric I bought last week.

A Better Border

I’ve pulled out some dark blue and teal threads from the collection to overstitch the dark green areas and connect them to the border fabric. And now I can get to work on the poppies themselves.

It’s hard to tell precisely what the colours are from the photo which makes the greens very green and the border blues more blue than they actually are. I do believe the tones in that border fabric as I see it in natural light will liven up the whole piece.

Poppies – Conundrum

Posted by

4

I have quite a bit of thread painting to do on the poppies – but I started thinking ahead to finishing the piece. I added the silk “matte” and a red piping to enclose the focus on the poppies themselves. I’ve spent quite a lot of time going through my stash, I’ve done it 3-4 times so far, looking for a bordering fabric that will tie the whole together and I’m coming up empty handed.

Conundrum – How To Border/Frame This Piece

I’ve laid a range of fabrics against the piece – black, dark grey, tan, light grey, blue, different shades of green, even shades red and peach – nothing looks quite right. Pale colours darken the poppies; dark colours make the whole seem brighter, but nothing I have seems to work to enhance the image. Everything seems to detract in some way.

Thursday a couple of friends and I made an excursion to Avonport Fabrics – an hour away from Halifax and there I found the Windham “Uncorked” fabrics in a variety of shades including this dark green. In the shop I thought I’d found “the right match” but when I got it home and cut strips I’m not so sure. The fabric blends the many shades of green in the image but it seems to overwhelm it. I’ve cut the fabric for a finished 3″ border/frame – perhaps it should be narrower – say just under 2 inches? That’s why I’ve got the black/tan/greenish fabric outstretched below – trying to see whether the darker fabric would liven up the image.

It’s a conundrum – I plan on thread painting the flowers with orange/peach shades to lighten the poppies and I may have to do more stitching within the greens, as well. Perhaps it’s just that green isn’t a favourite colour of mine and the contrast with the red of the poppies is too “Christmassy”.

At the moment I just don’t know what to do about framing this piece. Frustrating, because I want to get it done and move on to whatever is next….

Poppies II

Posted by

1

I’ve been working on this piece for the past couple of days. First the dark green areas, then the various types of foliage. It’s been tricky because poppy leaves are long, thin, and fern-like so stitching them has required quite a bit of decision-making since it’s not possible to actually capture the precise detail – my goal has been to imply the structure using a number of different machine stitches to thread paint them.

Thread Painting – Under Way

This afternoon I started on the flowers themselves. I’ve begun working on the central pistil on the right-hand flower. I have finished the light areas. Tomorrow I’ll get to work on the stamens surrounding the centre – using some combination of greys/tans.

I’ve made progress faster than I thought I would – I expect to finish this piece over the weekend.

Poppies

Posted by

0

Yesterday, I started by adding fusible web to background fabric. I also did slight enlargements for a couple of parts of the image and printed them on fabric (adding fusible web to those fabric printouts). Today, I started building the background. I had laid out a piece of muslin 20″x24″ and backed it with batting; I serged around the outside to hold the layers together, then marked the horizontal and vertical centres to use for marking the 9″x12″ layout for the image. The muslin/batting functions as a canvas for the fabric/thread painting that becomes the art piece. I’ve purposely made it quite a bit larger than the image to give me lots of room to frame, then trim the piece.

Rather than trying to piece the hosta in the upper left corner I elected to use the image printed fabric and I will add definition with thread painting. Same with the poppy leaves – they are very fine and frilly and I didn’t have any fabric that implied the texture so I also chose to use the image printed fabric for them as well. The taxus, the grass, and the blue house are filled in with printed/batik fabrics. I pressed the elements into place leaving an opening for the poppies which, for the moment, are being shown with an outlined  paper cutout.

Background In Place

Once the background was set up, I traced the poppy petals based on the lines marking petal edges on the paper flowers. So far I’ve cut out the templates for the larger flower and begun cutting out fabric using the templates – I’m about half-way around the flower. I numbered each petal element both on the template and on on the paper so I can easily reconstruct the flower.

Templates Created For First Poppy

I will set up the poppy using a silicon press sheet so the fusible web on the back of the petals won’t stick to my ironing board. Once assembled, I’ll iron the completed flower in place – that’s after I build the other flower because the flower on the right overlays the smaller, one!

And then the thread painting will begin….

Tropical Flowers – I Can’t Believe It’s Finally Done

Posted by

3

I finished thread painting yesterday afternoon. I added a muslin backing and hidden binding. This morning I hand stitched the hidden binding in place. After all this time (I actually started this raw-edge appliqué piece on May 17, 2018) I have it completed – absolute done!

Tropical Flowers – Finished!

The project sat around for months while I worked on other things. I started thread painting this piece on Jan 8, 2019 because I was teaching a class on thread painting and had to have something to work on myself. I got into the thread painting seriously after Jan 17 – when I completed the framing (I’d done that early in the process because I wanted the women in the thread painting class to see how I go about finishing my work). I spent time filling in leaves, then flowers. In the beginning, each leaf took a day or three to complete.

I was sure I’d taken on more than I’d expected when I started out. But as days went by I could see I was making headway. Jan 20 – one leaf finished; Jan 22 – a second leaf; Feb 11 – I got back to the piece (after working on some new quilts and planning two wall art pieces) and finished an Anthurium; Feb 12 – more progress; Feb 13, Feb 17, Feb 18, Feb 20 – I continued thread painting elements until yesterday when I stitched the last of the Plumaria!

People often ask – “How long did a particular piece take”? It’s not a simple question. As you can see, I started this piece on a whim back in May, it sat around for several months before I returned to it. The thread painting was slow going to start with but as I made progress I was able to stick with it for longer. When nearing the end I worked on and completed elements in a single sitting (although I felt tension in my neck and upper back).

You can’t see the thread painting in the upper photo – here are photos of the detailed work:

Epiphyllum – Detail

 

Plumaria – Detail

 

Anthurium – Detail

I feel a weight lifted having finally completed this work. The gals in the thread painting class are meeting again on March 5 – my piece is done. We’ll spend time that day working on framing and finishing, even if their thread painting isn’t completed. I want to create motivation for finishing their projects.

Tomorrow I’m going to return to Poppies which I began Feb 4. Time to get back to that and to Two Men in Cortona.

 

Tropical Flowers – An End In Sight…

Posted by

1

An end is in sight – I’m now working on the last elements – the Frangipani/Plumaria flowers. Are they ever tedious to work on. I’ve managed to stitch the dark red/medium red central elements of all the flowers. I’ve just finished the yellow petal colour on two of them!

Frangipani/Plumaria

That leaves two small clusters of two/three blooms and one larger cluster of 7 flowers/6 buds to do. I’m going to work on the small clusters first – getting those done will make the task seem smaller. I’ve reached that point in the project where I just want it done. I’m tired of the careful, meticulous stitching. I want to get on to other projects including a couple of pair of corduroy pants that have been on the to-do list for quite a while.

This is it for today. I’ll get back to this tomorrow – maybe I’ll manage to get the two smaller clusters done which will leave just the larger one to complete – maybe on the weekend. Yeah!

 

text

Tropical Flowers – VIII

Posted by

8

Slowly but surely, I’m getting there.

Taking a break for a moment – thread painting tightens the muscles in my neck and shoulders – I need to stop from time to time to exercise a bit, sit with a hot magic bag, until the tension in my body subsides and I can resume sewing.

The Epiphyllum leaf is done – I’m not going to do any more on it – I’m leaving the medium green unstitched.

Epiphyllum Leaf Done

Next is the Plumaria leaf at the top. Once that is done, I will have all the Plumaria flowers to do! Four clusters which I expect will take a couple of days. But then the piece will be done!

Because the framing has been finished, all that will remain will be to back the piece. Then I can to return to the Poppies and the Two Men in Cortona….

Tropical Flowers VII

Posted by

1

I finished shading the pale grey areas of the first Epiphyllum yesterday; completed the edging in off-white this morning. This Epiphyllum is done – phew!

Epiphyllum 1 – Completed

Epiphyllum flowers come in a variety of shades from white to quite striking red. I chose to interpret the Epiphyllum above as a soft pink – shading the petals from fairly dark to quite pale leaving the white highlights without stitching.

In case you’re interested here is some information on Epiphyllum – orchid cactus. Epiphyllum is a genus of 19 species of epiphytic plants in the cactus family), native to Central America.

My friend Marlene has a couple growing in her greenhouse – the blooms are short lived – the bud takes quite a while to mature but it opens and dies in one night – a wonderful sight. Because these blooms open at night, nocturnal creatures, such as moths and bats, are responsible for pollinating the flowers.

Here is a photo of her Epiphyllum in bloom a couple of months ago.

Epiphyllum In Bloom

This Epiphyllum (also now completed) represents a pink one.

Epiphyllum 2 – Completed

I’ve started working on the two remaining large leaves now. They will both go quite quickly because the shading consists of quite long stitching runs that connect easily – this makes the stitching straightforward, unlike with the flowers where I had to plan the stitching so the short runs would flow from one spot to another. I’ve been working for two hours this morning – I’ve stopped for now. I hope to get back to the leaf I’ve begun, later this afternoon.

Tropical Flowers VI

Posted by

1

I wasn’t planning on working on this anthurium but I had the medium pink thread on the machine so I started stitching. Once that colour was filled in, it just made sense to carry on with the pale pink and then finally the white. My plan was to fill in the grey using colour and I think the shading works well.

Anthurium 3

To see the contrast, here is the panel before I’d done any thread painting – you can see this anthurium is almost entirely shades of grey. In the finished flower, a hint of grey is still apparent but the overall sense of the flower is rose pink.

Tropical Flowers – Before Thread Painting

I’ve made headway with the epiphyllums as well – here’s the lower one with the darker greys thread painted with the deep rose thread pair. Maybe later this afternoon (its a full-blown blizzard outside – not leaving the apartment today) I’ll get back to it.

Epiphyllum – Thread Painting In Progress

It really is a blizzard – visibility is much worse than the photo below suggests – I can’t really see the trees across from the parking lot. It’s turning to freezing rain – I can hear ice pellets hitting my windows. Expected to continue as freezing rain until this evening when the temperature will get above freezing but there won’t be much melting until Friday/Saturday when it will be warm enough to rain (which is forecast).

Blizzard

This is winter life in Nova Scotia – freezing rain followed by snow followed by freezing rain – makes for very hazardous driving conditions. Everything is cancelled today – no school, no university, the games centre is closed, and on and on. Good thing my freezer is stocked – lots of soup and chili. Just keeping my fingers crossed the power stays on!