For my first weekly art project of April, I have chosen to return to those wonderful tiles that adorn the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, to concentrate on just one of the flowers represented in their decoration. Carnations have inspired a variety of tile designs, and interweave amidst tulips, lilies & wonderful leafy forms. Hopefully this month, I will be able to spend some considered time with each, but today...it was carnations!
Out came my tile photos & once again I wished I had a decent magnifying glass! If I had been working at the computer I could easily have enlarged images, but that was not possible in this case. The good thing about not having a perfect source to work from, is that I can fill in the gaps with my own creating...making a design that is more unique, than a perfect copy!!
From the photos, I drew whatever designs I could loosely interpret as carnation-like in some way. I also brought out my sketch book from Istanbul. Instead of leaving them in their black linear form, I got out the coloured pencils & played with a few colour options.
This took rather longer than I had hoped....I've said that a few times havent I!!!!
Eventually, all the data was collected (drawings done & coloured in), so I began to create a design incorporating some of these carnation variations.
After rummaging through my fabric stash, making choices, cutting to size, ironing, layering up & then sewing the design through them all...it was time to contemplate the cutting back.
First though, I used my white pen to mark where I wanted my first cuts to be.
Once that first layer was cut back, the outlines were revealed, & the design started to take shape from there.
Here's what happened with further cutting back...
At last all the layers were cut back & I was very pleased with how it looked. I just needed to add a couple more little details for it to reach completion.
Scissors, embroidery thread & fabric pens came to the rescue & I was very pleased with how their contributions altered the way the design looked . I'm partiularly pleased with the not-completely-mirror-image version of symetry that I have managed to achieve. A very pleasing result...phew!
It was fun looking at carnations...next week tulips... maybe???
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