An Autumn Walk in the Greenbelt

I need to thank Neville Hamilton for the inspiration for this hand stitched piece.   Before Christmas he purchased one of my pieces as a gift for his partner after they saw it at my open house in November.   At the open house we had discussed my upcoming exhibition called 'Pathways' .  It just so happens that he is an excellent photographer.   When he came to pick up the artwork he brought me three photos for inspiration.  I immediately had an idea for one of them and he gave permission for me to use it as a photo transfer.   It was an autumn scene of his partner walking their dog in the greenbelt forest.   So here is what I did with it.  First I scanned the photo into my computer and printed it on fabric.  See original photo below.   My scanned version would not upload because it was in the wrong format so I had to take a picture of the picture for this post.

I surrounded it with rectangles of autumn colours, adding stitches and paint to the photo transfer.   Then I appliqued trees in the foreground and hand cut many tiny maple leaves and fused them in the foreground as well, stitching their veins with some lovely variegated threads I purchased from Laura Wasilowski at Artfabrik.

Laura's threads

  I covered it all with a fine yellowy netting and prepared a stretched canvas by turning it over and covering the frame with fabric.

I mounted the artwork inside the stretched canvas and, as a final touch I fused and stitched a few leaves drifting over the frame.

closeup of stitched leaves

spilling over onto the frame

                                                  

An Autumn Walk in the Greenbelt

It took a lot of hand stitching but once I started, I worked on it steadily until it was finished.  Today we are living in a winter wonderland in Ontario and this bright burst of autumn (and a steaming latte) is just what I needed.  I seem to find myself working on autumn scenes every winter.    This piece will definitely be part of my 'Pathways' exhibit.  I'm still thinking about the final naming of this piece.