This week I finally finished my Merill Comeau inspired piece, which has taken about 6 weeks to complete but I really enjoyed every part of it and love the end result. It is called 'Safe in my garden where the delphiniums grow'. The challenge was to take scraps of fabric, collage a background onto netting, then add a flower or plant on top which represents how you are feeling during lockdown. I am not a sentimental person and don't really subscribe to the idea that flowers have 'meaning'. Instead I looked to my garden and was inspired by the delphiniums that I have watched grow from a few inches high at the start of lockdown to full bloom. Their colours are amazing - the blue is almost luminous and their shape distinctive enough to attempt in fabric. I found out that they are called delphinium after the Greek for 'dolphin' as the unopened buds look a bit like a dolphin leaping - see second photo below.
I started on the background. The guidance Merill had given was simple and obvious, but really helpful - use brown tones at the bottom, green in the middle and blue/white/grey for the sky area at the top. She suggested leaving scraps in the shapes they are as they come out of your stash, which I tried to do. This was all pinned down on a piece of net curtain, which I sprayed with starch. I knew that the background had to be taller than wider - it came out 49cm x 36cm.
Laying out the scraps was really fun. I left some areas that just have netting and no other fabric in the sky and used quite a few pieces of organza. I also used the wrong side of some fabrics to tone down their colours. I ended up with this:
I didn't want to start stitching it down until I had laid the flowers and leaves over the top in case they didn't stand out on a fairly busy background. So I then had to work out a layout and cut out all the other pieces. I went for 3 stems of delphinium so I could show the different colours of blue.
To make the flowers I literally drew round a flower and made a card template. I had some hand-dyed blue fabric that had all three blue colours in it (this was a very lucky find in my stash) and cut round the template. I used Inktense pencils to add some additional colour variation and details before gathering it up with needle and thread to give a 3D shape. I cut a trefoil shape out of some cream cotton and sewed that to the centre, along with a scrap of beige scrim. Finally I added a blob of yellow Intense to the middle. I was pleased with how this came out so I repeated the process using different card templates to make all the other flowers.
To get the unopened flowers right I used a reference line drawing off the internet and made a 2-part template for the partially opened flowers. A major characteristic of the delphinium, also known as Larkspur, is the spur at the back of each flower so I wanted a few flowers that showed this, side-on. I used some silk carrier rods that had been dyed with the main fabric for these. I have never used these before and found them to be the perfect shape but quite unstable - they de-laminated very easily so lots of PVA needed!
Making the leaves was similar - I drew round a real leaf to make a template, cut it out from an old duvet cover and added details with Intense pencils. These were very very fiddly so only 3 were made. I ended up with the following layout:
The non-descript leaves at the bottom were cut out from some curtain fabric and just fill in the gaps. I wanted to add Camellia leaves to the bottom left so again drew round a real leaf but this time cut them out of shot taffeta to mimic their glossiness. I overlayed these with half-leaves of organza to represent how they catch the light and cut a stem from a row of chunky brown corduroy!
Finally I added a couple of stems of a climbing pink summer Jasmine that is in front of the delphiniums in my garden. I made the leaves in the same way as the delphinium ones and hand-painted the pink flowers with Inktense pencils. I made a complete muddy hash of the first one I did but started again, with a much more delicate touch and amazed myself how realistically these came out.
Composition complete, I now needed to stitch it down.To remove the flowers and leaves from the background I covered the front with a piece of card and flipped it over and then covered it again and flipped it back. At this point I couldn't see how I was going to finish the piece without it puckering up too much and being unmanageable. I remembered I had a rectangular embroidery frame for a previous piece and by a huge stroke of luck it was just about the right size for this. I was glad that I hadn't cut off the excess netting so could use drawing pins to keep it taught on the frame.
Stitching down the background was easy and fun - no right or wrong, just lots of random straight stitches. Stitching into it with the netting on the back made it very easy and lightweight to handle.
Then I started stitching down the flowers and leaves. I started with the delphinium stems using my photos above as a positioning guide. The stems were cut from T-shirt fabric, which wants to curl naturally and I liked the 3D shape so I couched down string and floss to provide support underneath. Then ran an ordinary glue stick down the top to keep the stem fabric in place whilst I stab stitched it in place.
I added the delphinium, jasmine and other leaves at the bottom with backstitch. The jasmine stems are 6 stranded floss, couched down with a dark pink spiralling stitch. The camellia stem was attached with stab stitch and the centre of the leaves with backstitch. However, for the veins on the camellia leaves I used long straight stitches, bent into shape with a small retaining stab stitch - a technique taught to us by artist Emily Tull. I liked the effect this made, almost looks like the camellia leaves are quilted.
Finally on to the flowers. I used tiny stab stitches for the jasmine flowers. For the delphiniums I attached the open and side on ones with small stab stitches but backstitched the buds. The buds were quite fragile by now so I first stuck them on with a bit of glue stick to give them support. The last step was to backstitch in the stems joining the flowers to the main stem. I had to be careful to do this neatly on the areas with just net in the background, running the end of the thread back through my stitching on the back to the stem before jumping down to the next flower. Here are some close ups of the final piece:
To display this piece I can thread a wire or stick through the channel at the top and possibly hang it in a window. Both the delphiniums and jasmine have finished flowering in my garden but I can gaze on them all year round when I look at this!
