2nd Place, The Exemplary 2022 Challenge

Summer’s End is a 4” x 4” design on 18-count Zweigart Sandstone Vintage canvas, using silk ribbon embroidery and canvaswork techniques to create a textured and dimensional embroidery piece.

Webster’s defines texture as the look, surface, or feel of something. For the Challenge I have chosen to create a sunflower as its color is always cheery, it seems to sparkle in the sunshine, and its petals and center florets are both smooth and rough.
The background is worked in the Peaks and Valleys stitch with Petite Silk Lame thread. The sparkle in the silk represents the sunshine. The shaded painting of the vintage canvas shows through the openwork stitching, adding a layer of depth. The attractive petals or ray flowers are stitched in layers with 7mm Treenway silk ribbon using the ribbon stitch. The sunflower center is really hundreds of small florets or flowers, the perfect opportunity for lots of French knots using overdyed Straw Silks and Watercolours. The edging of the flower disc or ruffle is stitched with a sparkly Entice in a Turkeywork variation, then edged with 3mm beveled Czech beads sewn down with a luminescent thread. Glass seed beads embellish the flowerhead for even more glitz. All the colors of the piece are then drawn together with an overdyed Wildflowers in a braided stitch creating a shadowbox border.

I had a wonderful time creating this piece and watching my sunflower come to life!