This is the final fiber portrait I did in my seasonal sihouette series. I knew I wanted to use some natural materials like dried seed pods in this portait. But when I attempted to stitch the needles from Scots pine trees onto the linen background, it was such a frustrating experience that I gave up.
In fact, I decided that the Winter portrait would be the only one I would do. I put everything away for a little bit but then it snowed again and I needed a project. I went on to create the Spring portrait and enjoyed the process enough to return to my original idea of four portraits, one for each season.
This autumnal self-portrait has the widest mix of materials of the series: natural items, metal, threads and ribbon, felt and feathers. I included everything from the feathers of a dead pheasant's wing that a student had given me when I was an art teacher in the early 1970s to a piereced metal rondel that was the remaining half of a favorite pair of earrings.
I stitched down a dried honey locust pod whose color and curled up shape nicely completmented my earring. And I figured how to attach the pine needles. I tied them in tiny bundles and then couched the groups in place. It was an easier method but using bunches also made more of a visual statement that individual pine needles did.
I would say this portrait was the most complex to sew as I wanted to include so many different textures and types of material. There were soft and sharp items and very fragile pieces like the seedpod from our Carolina Silverbell tree that I used as part of the nose. But it's this mix that makes this Fall portrait my personal favorite.
In the final stage of the process, I mounted each portrait on black foamcore. And then Mark made beautiful wooden shadowbox frames painted black inside and out so the little textiles take center stage.
You can see the Spring, Summer and Winter portraits by clicking on their titles.
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