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Green nuno felt with stitched flowers with stems added in wool couched stitching.
Painting the Landscape

Painting the Landscape

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The last time I showed you my Indian Paintbrush piece, I was undecided about the way the stems were ending so abruptly on the background. So I left it for awhile before making a decision on what to do.

The first thing I decided to do was add some stems to the blue flowers. I didn’t want the stems to be too visible so I chose a thread that was close to the background color. You can click on the photos to see them enlarged.

Green nuno felt with appliqued Indian Paintbrush and small blue stitched flowers with stems added in wool couched stitching.

It’s probably hard to see here but I did think that the stems helped the piece feel “more grounded”. But the stems of the main flowers still looked like they are not integrating with the background. So I decided to add paint to cover the end up a bit. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo with just the paint over the bottoms of the stems and over the lower third of the piece.

Green nuno felt with appliqued Indian Paintbrush and small blue stitched flowers with stems added in wool couched stitching. Addition of paint and stitched flowers to the stems of the Indian Paintbrush.

I added more blue flowers with stems over the base of the larger flower stems and the stems are looking better. I have decided it’s finished and now need to find a background fabric so I can finish it and get it ready for framing. This one is named “Painting the Landscape”.

Green nuno felt with applique cutouts in place to create Indian Paintbrush largest foreground flower.
Indian Paintbrush Applique Process

Indian Paintbrush Applique Process

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I have started working on the green nuno felt that I showed you several weeks ago.

Nuno felted green silk with highlights of orange.

Here’s where I left off and you will see that I eventually turn this piece so that the orange bits were at the top instead of the bottom.

Fabric and photos laid out on work surface before beginning applique process.

I looked through my stash to see what fabric I had that would work with my inspiration photos of Indian Paintbrush. I have tons of photos that I have taken of wildflowers so I printed out some that were closer and some that were farther away.

Green nuno felt beside tracing paper and scaling photos of Indian Paintbrush flowers on copy machine.

Next, I needed to scale the foreground flowers up a bit. I do that on my copy machine and then use the photos to trace the design on to tracing paper.

Light box with photo of Indian Paintbrush and tracing paper on top. Partially drawn design with pencil.

I use my light box to trace the design on to the tracing paper.

Green nuno felt beside tracing paper with Indian Paintbrush flowers designs drawn in pencil.

Here’s the design beside the background nuno felt. I have turned it around so the orange is towards the top and further in the background to represent more flowers.

The next step is to copy the designs on to freezer paper. I picked out which petals I wanted to be a darker orange and transferred the petal shapes on to freezer paper. I decided to leave the edges of the fabric raw when I appliqued them down since Indian Paintbrush have ragged edges. Therefore, if there’s fraying, it’s not a big deal.

Then I cut out the flower shapes, some in darker orange and some in lighter orange. The fabric is all hand dyed so it has color changes throughout and looks more natural for flowers. I then peeled off the freezer paper to see what the flower would look like on the background. At some point, I decided to leave the freezer paper in place as it was preventing too much fraying before I started stitching the pieces down.

Green nuno felt covered by tracing paper and applique cutouts in place to create Indian Paintbrush flowers.

Here are all the pieces in place over the tracing paper which is laid on top of the nuno felt. I haven’t decided if I need to add anything else or not. I think I will stitch the small flowers down on the background and then lay out all the foreground flowers and decide if it needs other flowers or grass or… More to come!