Serena Fenton

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Rose portrait in progress

For the first half of the project, I snapped photos every half hour or so - and then I got too intense to break for images.

The piece began with a sketch on black cotton. I then outline major color planes in Pentel Fabricfun pastel dye sticks.

When I ironed the piece to set the colors, they all melted into the black background.

You can see (on the lower right side of the face) how much the color faded with ironing.

To get a base color for the embroidery, I used snippets of fabric. These were held in place with washable, acid free glue stick.

More on the underlay. This is what it looked like before I began the embroidery.
The face has a preliminary embroidery and I began the background (clothes) with a piece of floral velvet.

I had decided, by this time that I wanted the hair to be flowers and to fade into a background of flowers. The face and body were cut out of the black fabric and appliqued onto the rose background.

At this point the texture of the velvet became overwhelming. I removed it and replaced it with a leaf pattern rayon.

Skipping ahead many steps, the flowers were cut from a half dozen fabrics, appliqued to the piece. The entire work was free motion embroidered.

Frame is a simple black cotton binding.

last updated: March 16, 2004