Honesty Seeds by Hilary Gooding
Some time ago I was challenged to make a piece of work featuring Honesty Seeds. I love them and because of their fragility I went straight for the box of sheer fabrics. This is how I made my piece.
1. From my collection of photos I chose one where I had scanned a small branch of seeds.
2. I made a tracing of the image.
3. Then I took this outline into the embroidery software and created the stitch-out lines.
4. Because I didn’t want to wash the piece I couldn’t use a wash-away stabilizer. The alternative was to use a heat-away stabilizer so I had to use polyester organza – a nylon organza would melt! The layers were hooped up and I made sure they were very tight in the hoop.
5. After stitching out I had to very carefully cut away the light brown organza from the background area and remove the stabilizer. Here is a close-up of the seed heads.
6. Finally I put the piece in a box frame ( 24 cm square). The trick was to ‘float’ it so I mounted it just under the glass. It sits about 1.5 cm above the back. This means that in certain light I get a lovely shadow of the design on the back.
I am so pleased with the result that I would do it again and I definitely recommend the method.
This is so beautiful! What a brilliant idea 🙂
This is lovely. Thanks for sharing your process. The result is most effective, capturing the plant’s translucence with your choice of materials and method of display.
Absolutely amazing Hilary – so delicate and I just love the 3D effect where the shadows become part of the work. Am tempted to try something similar now!