Fingers & hands

Every time I read a post from Janet Brandt about the progress on her embroidered casket, I too want to work on embroidered figures.

Casket Panel by Janet Brandt

Isn't it simply delightful? If you are not already familiar with Janet's fabulous embroidered figures you should have a look at the work on her blog - she tells the most fabulous stories with her extraordinary stumpwork pieces.

Over the hills 

It's been a very long time since I have had the pleasure to play with my Over the Hills panel - in fact I have not showed you any progress since I finished the feet a few months ago. Figures without heads look so unattractive so the hills and legs were all you saw. She now has a face...

  

This morning I set out to make the hands. Hands are fun but so very fiddly to make so I confess have been putting it off with excuses of 'more important' things to be done...
Wire fingers are so tiny to wrap and my fingers were rather tired by the time I had the pile of ten strange looking wiry things done. Looking at them makes you wonder how they can ever possible end up looking like anything that even resembles fingers.

 

More wrapping and there - a pair of hands. Perhaps not the most perfect or elegant hands you have ever seen, but hands they are all the same.

Stitching them to the panel, the hands look enormous and I had to remind myself that (if I remember correctly from a drawing lesson on human proportion many moons ago) a hand is a long as the face...

The stripy, skinny arms are stitched as heavily padded satin stitch - like trailing used for French monogramming. I even managed to (almost) match the stripes.

So here she is - looking so much more like a person than the sad armless stick figure on my canvas this morning. Happy!

Hope you have a lovely week,
Anna