Sunday, August 11, 2013

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.
 

6 comments:

  1. Oh, Ann! It is beautiful! Now I understand your difficulties in getting it right. What an amazing piece to conceive of and execute within two weeks. I think it is fantastic. Do I understand correctly that you made a sandwich of the flower first and the cut away the batting before re-andwiching? However you did it, it is beautiful. I think that publisher should commission you for a series of covers!

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  2. Ann,this is beautiful.Are you aware that you created the illusion of a rounded edge where the book binding would be? Love it.

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  3. Thanks Sharon.

    Yes, I quilted parts of it twice. By quilting the petals first, they stand out a bit during the second quilting.

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  4. Your flower really looks alive, and even in the photo it has depth. It sounds like you went to a lot of effort, but the effect is worth it - great job!

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  5. This is lovely. Great work!
    Pam Clark

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  6. I really LOVE this! I would love to see a series of these hung as a collection :-)

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