Structure - Neroli Henderson - "Blue Gum"

I found this month's structure challenge incredibly difficult, too many ideas to choose from was part of it but I soon realised that while my work and the processes I use tend to be very planned with everything designed pre-emptively that when I actually start painting and sewing I'm quite fluid and spontaneous. I also realised that most of my artwork tends to be organic in feel and working in geometrics or pleats or tiny piecing (which were my first ideas) were counterproductive to how I design.

I ditched my first two ideas and decided to attempt a leaf skeleton, it was a nice blend of natural curves and shapes while showing the structure in detail. I found a image that was copyright free on the web and set about recreating it using the technique of stitching onto a dissolvable stabiliser so I would have a stand alone piece that I could then attach to a backing.

The image I used as inspiration was wonderful fragile and airy and I soon found that at the size of 420x297mm I couldn't portray that delicate nature using standard weight threads on a wash away surface. Eventually after a bit of pouting and posting my fail on Facebook I was buoyed up enough by my friends comments to throw the image I was aspiring to away. My lines were much thicker and the design over all much more solid. I stretched and ironed parts of the leaves out to open the spaces up, brushed on some acrylic metallic paint, added some gold leaf and felt much happier.

Detail

While the piece itself is A3 from leaf tip to stem tip as this is the set size of our challenge I plan to mount it in a square box frame with the leaf edges overhanging the window mount - a little like this:

I used cotton and poly threads to stitch the leaves and then washed out the stabiliser leaving just enough in to be able to shape the leaves as they dried. The backing is silk muslin that I have painted in parts with gold Lumiere paint and stitched down twisted and torn pieces of the same silk fabric. I also trapped tiny fragments of gold leaf under the sheer silk backing fabric.

The free motion stitching in the background has been done very jagged and had intentionally varied stitch lengths - some of the stitches look more like hand stitches are are up to 1cm in length. I used a silk thread to match the sheen of the backing fabric. I was pretty impressed at my Bernina 750 for doing this without breaking any threads. I did break one needle from pulling too much, but given this type of stitching goes against everything you're meant to do in free motion I'm ok with that - and I really like how it mimics the texture of rough bark.

You can see the texture of the background with the painted silk snippets and watered down acrylic paint in this photo.

Detail

Hope you like it - Neroli

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