For my applique project I wanted to explore the world under the sea. I was inspired by a vintage travel poster, but the project doubled in size when I found two beautiful pieces of dyed habotai silk at the knitting and stitching show at Alexandra Palace in the UK which was used for the background. After 7 seven weeks I came up with this:
its huge! although most of the stitching takes place in the lower half of the piece. As this was a project for my course with the Royal School of Needlework, I had certain criteria I had to meet. I had to include 6 types of edges, they were corded, couched, satin stitched, folded, machined and frayed.
Working all of this in was a lot of fun, particularly the frayed edges in the waves and making cord with stranded cotton.
Some of the close ups:
The fan coral in the bottom right hand corner was two layers of organza with stitching over the top. The larger veins are wires which have been couched over, this allows the coral to be shaped slightly
The turtle was fun to do! he is made entirely separately from the rest of the piece and then stitched on - he is sooooo cute!
A lot of the elements are stitched, however all of the fish and the turtle come from a beautiful fabric I found. The clarity of the images on it was AMAZING!
Working out the stitching was lots of fun and I used beth8144's brilliant Undersea Hoopla piece as inspiration!
The actual thread is here
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=406926.0
