For one of my assessment pieces, I had to make a 3D piece, so I decided to try my first embroidered sculpture!
I love stumpwork, and I'd always fancied trying to take it that step further and make something truly 3D and sculptural, so now seemed like the perfect time to try my first embroidered sculpture. My design project had all been about daisies, as I love floral designs and daisies are my favourite flower. So I decided on a sculpture of daisies. I researched different ways to make the flowers stand up on their own, and how to present the work. I came up with the idea of using polystyrene as a base, and decided to house the finished embroidery in a glass dome, so that it wouldn't get dusty!
Getting the Design Right
Once I'd got the idea of how I could make my daisies stand up, I started to sketch and work out how I might make the individual elements of the design.
I started trying out the different techniques I was thinking of using, and gathered together different materials.
Getting to Work
Once all the planning was done, I could finally start stitching - lots of French knots for flower centres!
Once the centres were stitched and on their wire stems, I started to stitch the silk petals to the base of the centres. I started by cutting out each petal, and individually stitching it to the centre. This was incredibly fiddly! So I came up with the idea of leaving them on a strip of fabric - it was so much quicker.
Next I needed to cover up where I had stitched the petals, so I stitched these green circles to go over the top.
I needed some grasses to go with my daisies, so I got out the soluble fabric and got to work with some bullion knots.
Making the Base
As well as loving embroidery, I'm also fond of baking and cake decorating. When you make sugar flowers you use a polystyrene cake dummy to hold your flowers before making the flower arrangement to go on your cake. So this it what I tend to do with my wired stumpwork pieces, to make sure I don't lose them before they go on my embroidery. This is how I came up with the idea to use polystyrene as my base. I have no idea what other people might use, but this worked for me!
Obviously I couldn't just push my daisies into polystyrene, it needed to look like grass, so I made a half dome of green prefelt, to cover the ugly white polystyrene.
I then needle felted some wool fibre and some threads onto the base over the dome to give it a grassy, mossy look, before starting to push the completed daisies and grasses into the polystyrene.
The Finished Piece
And here's the finished piece, under its dome!
I thoroughly enjoyed making this, and am really pleased with how it turned out. I'll definitely be doing more sculptural embroidery in the future after my course has finished.
After my first embroidered sculpture, it was time to do a bit of something else I love: needlelace. Read about it here: Needlelace Edgings and Aemlia Ars (claireharveyembroidery.com)
Comments