New Project.

 The art group that I belong to have set a new challenge for this year, focussing on the gardens that we have visited from month to month. We are all keen gardeners, all but 1 of the 7 that is, but even a non-gardener can appreciate the gardens of others. I am already behind in my pieces, as we started in February, but I did visit the Lotus garden that month and took masses of photos. I decided to start with 2 of my favourite images, the lotus and the blood lily, so pulled out suitable fabrics from my stash for just those 2.

 The challenge pieces are to be 21 cm x 15 cm (A5) so big enough to work on but not so big that the challenge is daunting! Here I've changed the photos to black and white so as to make the shapes easier to define.

 I've written on each piece the colour to aim for from the photo and more prominently delineated the individual petals

 The beginning of the piece with a raw silk top to the central seed head and heavy white satin for the petals all mounted on a dark green slightly patterned fabric.

 Next I coloured the petals with very dilute acrylic paint. I'm not sure if the sheen of the satin will be visible through the paint, but the very pale petals at the top of the image will have a little sheen I think.

I had fun selecting the thread colours that fit the colour scheme.  I use plain cotton or polyester cotton blend thread for machine embroidery normally, as the vegetation and flowers that I usually depict don't really shine, but for this I intend using synthetic thread to bring out the shine of the lotus petals.