Munaudiere and Klimt

Some months ago I took a class from Mike Parr. He is a great designer and teacher from Canada. The project was called Sheryl and is a small evening purse that was inspired by Gustav Klimt. I couldn't resist changing the design because I wanted more gold and brighter colors. My inspiration was a painting of poppies from Klimpt although I did study a number of his paintings to get ideas of what I wanted.

Here is the original paining.

Here is the front of my purse.

And this is the back of it.

The embroidery part was fun to do because of the bright contrasting colors.  I wanted something on the back that was in keeping with the front but not in color. So I did swirls of gold and put a tree of life inspired by one of his in the center. The finishing was not difficult but cutting and then gluing my embroidery was a bit disconcerting. However it it finished and I love it. The name minaudiere makes me smile and I finally learned how to pronounce it.

Boleyn Bloom

My friend and super talented designer has created a piece called Boleyn Bloom. Here is her post about it.

 I, probably like many of you, have been doing my part by staying home, staying safe and staying healthy and feeling quite helpless. I have been working on the instructions for a very pretty embroidered flower, the Boleyn Bloom and trying to think of what I could to do to make a small contribution. It’s a very pretty piece and I have had several inquiries about when it might be available. I will be making the pattern and instructions in PDF form available to anyone who would like to have it. All you have to do is make a donation of any size to your local women’s shelter or food bank and send me an email to say indicate that you have (honour/honor system) and I’ll email the instructions to you. There is a lot of gold and silk in the supply list but I encourage you to substitute things you already have in your house. Remember, stay at home! I’ll be working on a suggested list of threads that you can substitute and it will be included in the PDF. You can contact me at gutterlaneembroidery@gmail.com. 

 

I had donated, so I let her know and she sent me the PDF of the pattern.

I had most of the threads although I did have to substitute a few of them. 

Here are photos of my work in progress.

Probably the trickiest part was the gold looped border. By the time that I was part way through, I figured out a way that would have worked better but over all I like it.

This is the finished piece.

Cabinet of Curiosities - Case

Since we have been social distancing, I have had time to get to something that has been on my "to do" list for a number of  years. Before you can adhere the embroidery to the wooden casket, you need to glue a layer of paper to the raw wood. I had done this with the Goldfish trinket box so I thought I knew what to do. Turned out to be a bit harder that I thought.  I studied the videos of the steps to cover the box with paper first, then either decorative paper or fabric. After looking at several samples I decided that some it was just whatever you want to do. All of the samples were unique.
So I started in on the cream paper for the outside of the drawers and the case. That went fairly smoothly but I did use a lot more glue that I thought I would. I used rice glue because I figured that the usual wheat paste would not do my Celiac any good.  The rice glue has been used in Japan for centuries so I knew it was stable and would glue paper and fabric to wood.

Here is the whole case covered. Since the paper takes up more room than you might think, the top lid will not fit in place yet. I will have to think about just how to adjust  the pieces but for now it is what it is.

These are the various drawers, lids and bits. Some of them have marbled paper on them. When we traveled to Italy a number of years ago. We went into a fabulous shop in Florence that had drawers of hand marbled paper and I found the greatest paper.  Other parts have silk Duponi  and silk velvet is in the bottoms of just a few drawers. I have been lucky to find paper, Duponi and velvet that match.

Here is the main case with the ink well, pounce pot and pin cushion in place.

I wanted something to decorate this front panel of the case. You can't see it with the other sliding panel in place but the thought of it being there makes me happy. I used period appropriate flowers and painted them on paper before I glued it in place.