This is the first of my final projects for my City and Guilds Machine Embroidery course. It's based on photos I took at Corfe Castle of the collapsing stones and plantlife on them. I created a block to print from using a pencil eraser, then used a heat transfer press to print it onto polyester. I wish I had a heat transfer press at home, I loved playing with it. I then quilted a moss effect around the stones. I used dissolvable fabric in a hoop to create lacy machine-embroidered leaves, looking as if an insect had started eating them. I used embroidery thread and buffalo wool to hand sew lichen onto the stones, then used random wool pieces to act as vines to frame the piece.
It didn't come out quite as I had envisioned, I didn't really have time to get the right heat transfer paint colours mixed. I had intended it to be less yellow, it's not helped in this photo by the inside-banana colour of our lounge wall (Wickes Buttermilk, I'd assumed it would be cream....) and the weird angle I took it from, it's actually rectangular.
