Part 5 Personal Project Stage 5a

It's been pretty hard going at times but eventually it seems to be coming together. Doing a storyboard made me focus clearly on my selections and suddenly life became easier.

I made my felt and cut my tree trunks. I looked carefully at my birch bark markings:

Birch bark markings

I stitched my tree trunks to my felt using irregular straight stitches and three strands of dark grey embroidery thread.

This accomplished I used straight stitches again to represent undergrowth.  This time the colours I used were greys, black (one, two and three strands) and a very little silver (fly stitch).

Straight stitch undergrowth

I've restrained myself from putting too  much in as I think it would spoil it.  I have found that my work has several characters.  The first is demonstrated when it is put against a window. The silk becomes fluffy clouds and the trunks show their constituent fabrics:

Against the window in sunlight

When I lay it on my white table it looks completely different, it's not better, just different:

On my white worktable

Actually the best image seems to be a scanned one:

A scanned image

Because it looks good with light behind it I tried it wrapped around a clear glass vase with an electronic tea light inside:

Lit from inside a vase

Because this looks good I plan to do another piece of work that is made to fit this vase.  I think the undergrowth needs to be higher and I might investigate another idea I've had for undergrowth.  The tree trunks look OK.

I'm very pleased with this work.  It retains the mystery and the essence of the original photo in a very simple, pared down way.  The background felt is subtle and adds a lustre and sheen that have the ethereal quality I set out to achieve.

As sometimes happens in my web wanderings I found the website of Mary-Clare Buckle almost by accident. She creates what she calls "art lights".  These developed from her idea of "floating felt"  The development of these lights is detailed on her website at 

http://www.1-art-1.com/textile-art-light-gallery.html

and is very interesting.  Buckle talks about the way the light source "brings up the pattern of the individual wool fibres".  She also notes that the work looks very different but still attractive with the light turned off. This is just what I have found.

An art light in situ Mary-Clare Buckle
http://www.1-art-1.com/interior-design-art-lights-lighting-ideas-uk.html

Interestingly one of Buckle's developments is to enclose felt between acrylic sheets and then use light.  The website is well worth a look.