Poppy Stems

After completing the flowers in my poppy project, it was time to audition fabrics for stems and buds.

I also played around with how to best achieve the back lighting on the stems.  My plan was to use a white paint pen, in a sort of dotted (fuzzy) effect.

That seems to be the right direction, but I’ll probably need to kick it up a notch.

(Did you notice that most of the background pins have disappeared?  That’s because I quilted the background before adding the flowers.  Much easier stitching that way.)

To represent the back lighting on the buds I backed each of them with white fabric, trimming it closely to give a skinny halo effect.

On to the stems. They didn’t show up that well, but I knew they’d show up more once I added the back lighting effect. But wait, are they too skinny?

I made one (left) stem fatter, above, to test stem widths.  Yep, I needed to bulk them up. Below, they’ve been reworked.

Next, came the white paint.  Slightly intimidating. I started with just a little, but it didn’t show up that well, so I kept adding.  I ended up here. It looks kinda heavy and messy up close, but I think it works correctly from a distance.

Next comes flower stitching.

*I just started an online version of this class last week.  We’re just finishing lesson one so  it’s easy to catch up, if you’re interested.  Full details here.

Ellen Lindner