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Panel or Hanging

The brief for this piece was to make a panel or set of panels based on botanical drawings, either watercolours or pen and inks. The design source was herbs.

The techniques used, method of construction and price should be aimed at a commercial market, with the finished panels easy to reproduce in a number of combinations. I therefore elected to do most of the embroidery on the machine.

I originally looked at a variety of herbs, and the various lines and shapes of the plants flowers and leaves. I printed with some of the leaves, before stitching simple ideas in black on white.

I then experimented with colour, finally using 3 shades of green and 4 shades of pink and purple threads for all the samples to reduce costs, and worked various stitches and techniques to give additional shades.

In order to get the effect of a watercolour painting, I settled on using transfer paints and ironing over the leaf shapes to get a negative image, painting onto various papers and stitching both the paper and the fabric resulting in 2 pieces.