This week's inspiration image was a shot of bare tree tops, with a back drop of plain grey sky.
I wet felted around a resist to creat a circular bowl with the tree tops on the inside, an echo of the circular nature of the tree tops as taken from the ground looking up. I wanted a variety of textures in the piece, but limited myself to the stark black and pale grey of the original photo.
That's a difficult thing for me to do. One of the main features of my work is colour, and sticking to a monochrome palette was an interesting challenge. Colour for me gives depth and interest to my work, so I had to use texture and stitching to add depth and interest instead. I layered scrap lace and cotton strands in the final layer of felt, with a thick web of fibre over the scrap to hold it in place. Once I'd rolled the piece and cut it open to extract the resist, I turned the bowl inside out and continued to felt, so the black tree branches were sweeping down the inside of the bowl.
Once the bowl was dry, I used black cotton perle and variagated back stitch (one of my favourite stitches for texture) to add tree trunks to the outside of the bowl, and blended stitches with the lace around the lip of the bowl.
I like this piece. I enjoyed the challenge of working outside my comfort zone. I like it's wintery tree look, and I think it resonates well with the original image.
Next week's image is below. If you're joining in don't forget to tag @jenbesttextileart and #jensinspirationyear
