Second Place

This piece is from Luan Callery. I was particularly attracted by the beautiful curve of the orchid stem. I used woven cotton upholstery fabric as the background. Instead of using ribbon as the orchid petals as called for in the instructions, I decided to stitch them in long-and-short stitch stumpwork. This allowed me to pick exactly the color and the shading that I wanted. For the orchid buds I used the Japanese embroidery technique of “Blister Effect” instead of using felt padding. The detached leaf was done using wire that came from a lamp cord bundle, as I find these individual wires are just the right weight and flexibility to use in stumpwork. I added an extra detached leaf at the base to make it less top heavy.