Have you wondered how these garden vignettes (#100gardenthreads) begin? What's in the background to these creations? It literally takes hours some days to audition fabrics for the piece. The technique I use involves small scraps of fabric, cut or torn and then stitched over. Each day, I look through my stash and try to find the right colour, perhaps a little texture, even a pattern for a particular leaf or flower. Sometimes, I cannot find the right colour so I often hand colour with inks, dyes, and/or paint and quite often, with coloured pencils (Prismacolour). That isn't really the beginning - I spend a lot of time in the garden looking carefully, cutting samples of leaves, branches, flower stems, and of course photographing the specimens. Indoors , I work from cuttings and photos and drawings because by the time I am ready to interpret a flower, it may not be still blooming in my garden. And of course, the birds and other creatures don't stay around while I stitch
Stories about creative experiences, people and places - art tutorials, observations and learning.