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Thursday, June 16, 2011

Juicy Fruit

Here's a close-up shot of the blackberry fruits:
They look good enough to eat, really. It was the silk thread for the blackberries that lured me into really working on this piece. I can't say I was all that enthusiastic about it before. And then I went totally crazy with all those french knots and tiny little buttonhole stitches. Oh well. I've shown it to a couple of friends who pointed out the absence of thorns--I'll see what I can do about that once I've stitched on a border and done a general tidy up. Then the whole thing will need pressing, but without flattening out those juicy berries. I think I'll need help and the use of a staple gun to get it onto the prescribed 25 cm square canvas.
In other news, I've printed out my "history of the world timeline". Reading back over the instructions, I could have pretty much lifted a timeline from somewhere or other. The trouble is I felt so ignorant about world history, that I doubt I could have selected and edited it appropriately. As it is, the project's done and I've learned a lot, though I still feel profoundly ignorant and somewhat overwhelmed by the whole exercise. Maybe that's just the nature of world history . . .

2 comments:

Dee said...

Oh it is FABO!
If i may share one trick to get a 3D effect on berries (which may save some time in stitching endeavours.)
three small felt circles in ascending size stitched over each other to form a little hill on the fabric and then stitch all your many knots etc onto the little rounded mound. It looks great and is a good time saver as well. Yeah I know it comes a little late to be of use for this project.
I have in earlier progects done it varying ways, including layering knots on top of knots, effective but very labour intensive. I have made little half puffs and attached them later; again effective but fiddly and not as simple as the felt mounds. then there is making use of shading to show dimension.

Chiara Z said...

Thanks--as it turns out that's only one layer of french knots. The silk was quite textured, so I got all that thickness out of the fibre itself. I'll try the felt layers another time.