Apart of my HND qualification I was given the theme AI. This is a very damaging thing not only for our environment but also for artists and their work/jobs. I wanted to create something that AI couldn’t recreate (well for now anyway!) I wanted to create a piece that looked like you are looking down on the forest floor and see all the tactical elements that comes from the forest.

​

I choose to experiment with an entirely green colour palette, I had never limited myself to one colour for a piece before so it was important I achieved lots of different tones so that the pieces wouldn’t look flat and blend in to each other. With the very limited colour palette I focused on finding primary imagery of plants and greenery and paying particular attention to the plant veins and textures which I can include in my piece.

Using old bed sheets I dyed them using procion dyes and leaving some fabrics in the dye longer than others to create a range of green tones to work with- my hands were stained green for weeks!

 I took some of my leaf inspired drawings which I took into photoshop and created a repeating pattern. This was then printed onto fabric which I then patchworked with all my green tones, this broke up the piece a bit and added more dense areas of vegetation with the multidimensional grounds. When the piece was all patchworked together, this was my base to start adding the vegetation!

I made a selection of leaves such as, doc leaves, dandelion leaves, ivy and vine plant- made with a selection of techniques such as: free motion embroidering leaf vain details, water soluble embroidered leaves, stump embroidery, quilting, patchworking, quilting, using wire to make 3D plants, appliqué grass, wool stitched moss, watercolour leaves and beading embellishments.

Everything was added in a way to appear 3 dimensional and as if the piece is reaching off the ground. The piece was finished off with my logo and business card and a sigh of relief!

In total it took around 200+ hours (not including planning/ research)

The piece features: 93 free motion embroidered leaves, 32 ivy leaves, 144 grass blades, 6 meters of bias binding and the total quilt measures 90x130 cm!

(Full video of making process on my Instagram)