Wednesday 29 July 2009

Un ballo in maschera

Inspired by my efforts with the linen bookmarks and the gorgeous collection of paper ephemera I got in my recent swap with SmitoniusandSonata, I have attempted a little appliqued collage.


The delightful lady on her way to a masked ball is an illustration from an old Swedish book (courtesy of SandS) which I phototransferred on to cotton. There are a couple of gauze pieces too, some with ancient Latin script and a lovely morsel of a music manuscript. Some crocheted lace, a snippet of an old tray-cloth and the inevitable mother-of-pearl buttons were added for decoration. There's even some little pearls in there. I stitched round the portrait and went a bit mad with the french knots, but stopped short of adding any more hand-stitching. I'm never sure when enough is enough. Should I have put some more/different stitches on it? What do you reckon?

5 comments:

Uta said...

Ooh ist lovely, really lovely. Its something you want to hold and examine to make sure you haven't missed any little treasure. Doesn't need any different stitching. Its gorgeous the way it is.

Anonymous said...

Couldn't begin to say from a professional stitcher's point of view (not being one) but as a currently very infrequent needlewoman I think it is absolutely beautiful the way it is - more stitching would have been too much. Am very jealous of your talent ... and all the cool gadgets you have to carry out your ideas.
Anne

gunnelsvensson said...

so very beautiful collage!

Chrissie said...

Thank you all - it's the first one of this type that I've done, so I wasn't sure when to stop stitching!

LOVE STITCHING RED said...

Very very beautiful. I was admiring ths on your flickr photostream, and I adore your mosaic in the last post! The colours - oh wow!

Sending lots of best wishes your way - you inspire me!