Fantasy Book Cover

Cone Flower

Framed 10" square

  

Because of my love of plants and gardening, I have many gardening books.  My frustration with all of them is that they try to cram too many photos or a photo of too many plants on the cover.  Because of this, I decided to create a book cover that I would like to see.  I also was so fond of my idea, I thought it might make a nice series.  However, because of the strictness of my design, everything had to be exact.  It was much easier on paper than fabric.  Paper doesn't stretch and move, sometimes with a mind of its' own.

 

Because my original photo was very busy with other flowers, it had to be painted over a LOT!   I used tiny, iridescent seed beads on the top of solid small seed beads.  Those glaring dots in the photo are reflections of light.  I stretched the center of the flower with the round handle of my scissors.  Then I beaded it and stuffed it.  After mounting on the foam core, the perimeter of the 'cone' didn't want to lay flat.  I stitched the edges down with clear poly.  Now it has the depth that I wanted.  I like a lot of depth and texture.  I first stitched the petals to one layer of poly batting and a thin backing.  After stitching all of the petal veins, I cut around the petals so there was no batting between.  Then I made the usual layer of top-batting-backing.  I re-stitched around the petals so that they would have dimension.  Then I quilted the rest of the piece.