Nude: All finished and ready to go!

Wow! I can't believe it has been a month since the last time I posted on here... But to be fair it's been pretty busy in my world. Deaths, Promotions and a long To-Do list have filled up my days over the last month but in preparation for the upcoming Nowa Nowa Nudes exhibition next weekend I wanted to show you my entry fully finished and ready to go.

I only hit one snag with this piece, when i had to replace some net thanks to an over excited cat practising her parkour skills in my workroom and putting her foot through it. But we can keep that between us, right? Sweet...

So the first thing I had to do after i had finished all the stitching was cut back the second layer of linen. All of this has to be carefully done as you don't want to cut through the net or any of the stitching you've done.

 

the pictures don't show it, but the linen is cut right back to the stitching so there is none flapping about. This is going to make the skin seem more white as the coloured backing fabric won't show through so easily. Then I had to turn it over and start cutting the linen to reveal the net...

 A few tweeks here and there (I did mention my cat...) and it was finished! I decided to choose red to go behind her, not just because red is my favorite colour but also because I thought a nude pin up should express passion. I'm pretty pleased with the outcome and I hope the judges at the exhibition are too!

CONTEMPORARY AND TRADITIONAL MEET: A Nowa Nowa Nude...

Last week i started working on my entry for the Nowa Nowa Nude exhibition (Bein held in Nowa Nowa, victoria, Melbourne Cup weekend). Now, I've always been interested in tattoo designs, and love all the embroidered ones being done out there. Thread Wizard does some brilliant work as does katiekutthroat. But I've always wanted to mix my traditional techniques with these contemporary designs and it just so happens this exhibition allows me to do just that.

The idea behind fine whitework is that it's a mix of technique, stitched white on white, with different layers of fabric. My design will feature stitching on the original layer of linen, embroidered net and a second layer of linen. This will create some interesting depth to the piece.
So the first thing to do is the embroidered net. I didn't manage to get a picture of that, but once it was embroidered I tacked it onto the reverse of the work, leveling it up with the circle behind the pin up. Next up is the stitching on the first layer of linen because this is what will hold the net in place when I cut some of the linen away at the end.

I started on the peacock feathers first, using trailing for the edges.

The feathers were then filled with a mix of satin stitch, chain stitch, and stem stitch to give them some interest. The edge of the circle was stitched with ladder stitch which makes a nice edge to cut away to (this will make sense at a later date).

Now considering I've got a lot going on at the moment I am still managing to see her grow pretty quickly.

For the chair i wanted to do something a little different with my trailing, giving it a little texture so that it appears different from the trailing on the feathers. I also chose to split stitch the chair first and do the trailing over that, which does make the trailing go in faster as I can use both hands to stitch. (the orange thread is helping to hold the net in place underneath until the stitching on the body can be done.)

I'm really pleased with how it's going so far and all the bits that come next.