I loved making my embroidered daisy sculpture, and I'd been itching to do another, this time I decided on an embroidered poppy sculpture.
Gardening is really not my thing, and with a combination of children playing ball and rabbits eating everything in sight, our garden really hasn't got much going for it. But I do really love flowers and I'd love to have a pretty garden. So I decided to try pots of wildflowers in the front garden. In the mix there were plenty of poppies, they looked beautiful and we had lots of bees buzzing around them. It was lovely. So this inspired me to make my next project an embroidered poppy sculpture.
I had taken loads of photos of the poppies, so I had plenty of images to help me get started. I'd promised myself to do some sketching in preparation for each project, and this time I even decided to get the watercolours out. I've hardly painted since I left school, it was so lovely to get back into it.
Next stage was to try and work out the sculptural side of this, so I played about with some paper and wires to get and idea of where each of the elements would go. A bit rough and ready but it does the trick!
I was then able to make some pattern templates and get the wiring up of the petals done.
This time I wanted to try and make the petals double sided. This is not something I've ever really tried before, but it definitely requires some careful stitching!
Next onto the leaves. I used the both sides a like technique for these as well. It was slightly different, as I needed to stitch the veins of the leaf as well.
Then I stitched the pods centre and bumble bee. The centre and top of one of the pods use whipped wheels, and some tufting for the pods.
Then I gathered everything together, and very, very carefully, cut out all the parts, being especially careful with the petals and leaves. Cutting the threads could be disastrous!
I then made up each flower and pod, wrapped the stems and added the leaves ready for assembly. I find a cake dummy very useful for keeping my flowers safe while I'm working.
The finished piece. I'm so pleased with it. I think it's one of the best pieces I've done so far. It pushed me out of my comfort zone (both sides alike), the progress was slow, but I'm glad I persevered.
After this my next challenge was back into natural dyeing. Read about it here: Indigo Dyeing (claireharveyembroidery.com)