![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anne_dHope is the thing with feathers...
Here we have it, finally, only a year after the online Personal Symbols class that inspired the project. It was like this; one assignment was to put little pencil-sketched symbols to words, and one of the words was hope. I'd been reading Emily Dickinson, and my brain, which is, as you know, Dear Readers, a Very Weird Place, went click-click-click, Hope=> Feathers=> Wings=> Winged Heart.
Another assignment was to make a 3-D stuffed representation of one of the words/symbols. I've been playing around with winged hearts for a while, and decided to make one. The class example (not a winged heart, I should note) was in felt, but I chose to use some of my batiks instead. From there, things got a bit out of hand - it wanted beads, it wanted sequins, it wanted this stitch, no, it wanted that one instead... It was a very demanding little project.
There were, of course, the usual last-minute on-the-fly revisions once I actually got started again. I decided to make the back as pretty as the front, which meant that the backs of the wings had to be as neat and tidy as possible, which meant doing most of the embroidery before assembling them instead of putting all the layers together first and just letting the knots and stitching show, as in my other fiber collages. I ran short of one sort of seed beads and found that they'd been discontinued and had to rip a bit out and substitute a similar color (which, fortunately, was still available), and the leaf beads I wanted to use at the bottom of the bead dangle turned out to be mostly without holes, so that went from three colors to two, but I somehow kept on going. And so, a year later, here we are, one stuffed, embroidered, beaded, sequined wingéd hopeful heart.
Materials: Cotton batik, light-weight cotton batting, light-weight interfacing, muslin, poly fiberfill, embroidery floss, 11/0 seed beads, sequins vintage and modern, three Czech glass leaf beads, thread, Nymo bead thread, a 5/8" ring covered with buttonhole stitch in floss, and a bit of fancy ribbon.
Dimensions: Approx 8" from the tops of the wings to the bottom of the bead dangle by 8" across
Embroidery stitches: Satin stitch, chain stitch, detached chain stitch, blanket stitch, French knots, long-stemmed French knots, seed stitch, running stitch, whipped running stitch, whip stitch, feather stitch, back stitch
Bead embroidery stitches: Beaded blanket stitch (on the fronts of the wings), beaded picot edging (all around the wings)
And then I dragged the paint ladder into my little studio, climbed up and moved things around so that my Hope heart could hang way up close to the ceiling.
Almost forgot - Date of Completion, 27 June 2012
Here we have it, finally, only a year after the online Personal Symbols class that inspired the project. It was like this; one assignment was to put little pencil-sketched symbols to words, and one of the words was hope. I'd been reading Emily Dickinson, and my brain, which is, as you know, Dear Readers, a Very Weird Place, went click-click-click, Hope=> Feathers=> Wings=> Winged Heart.
Another assignment was to make a 3-D stuffed representation of one of the words/symbols. I've been playing around with winged hearts for a while, and decided to make one. The class example (not a winged heart, I should note) was in felt, but I chose to use some of my batiks instead. From there, things got a bit out of hand - it wanted beads, it wanted sequins, it wanted this stitch, no, it wanted that one instead... It was a very demanding little project.
There were, of course, the usual last-minute on-the-fly revisions once I actually got started again. I decided to make the back as pretty as the front, which meant that the backs of the wings had to be as neat and tidy as possible, which meant doing most of the embroidery before assembling them instead of putting all the layers together first and just letting the knots and stitching show, as in my other fiber collages. I ran short of one sort of seed beads and found that they'd been discontinued and had to rip a bit out and substitute a similar color (which, fortunately, was still available), and the leaf beads I wanted to use at the bottom of the bead dangle turned out to be mostly without holes, so that went from three colors to two, but I somehow kept on going. And so, a year later, here we are, one stuffed, embroidered, beaded, sequined wingéd hopeful heart.
Materials: Cotton batik, light-weight cotton batting, light-weight interfacing, muslin, poly fiberfill, embroidery floss, 11/0 seed beads, sequins vintage and modern, three Czech glass leaf beads, thread, Nymo bead thread, a 5/8" ring covered with buttonhole stitch in floss, and a bit of fancy ribbon.
Dimensions: Approx 8" from the tops of the wings to the bottom of the bead dangle by 8" across
Embroidery stitches: Satin stitch, chain stitch, detached chain stitch, blanket stitch, French knots, long-stemmed French knots, seed stitch, running stitch, whipped running stitch, whip stitch, feather stitch, back stitch
Bead embroidery stitches: Beaded blanket stitch (on the fronts of the wings), beaded picot edging (all around the wings)
And then I dragged the paint ladder into my little studio, climbed up and moved things around so that my Hope heart could hang way up close to the ceiling.
Almost forgot - Date of Completion, 27 June 2012
