Wednesday, January 29, 2025

2024 - The Year of Winging It, Part II: Sunflowers


In the fall of 2023, I had the honor to help test tat for Shawna Wachs' book,  Flower Garden.  Around that same time, I visited the Van Gogh Immersive Experience.  And I thought, could I make her sunflowers to look like his sunflowers?  It was a few months before I could dive into that project, but yes, I could.  I started with her sunflower, daisy, and mum patterns and gradually reproduced the painting.  Sometimes, my flowers were pretty close to her patterns, and sometimes I used her petal style as inspiration.  Sometimes my flower centers were like hers, and sometimes they were not, to better imitate the painting.  So, that's where the winging it theme fits in.

Here's my completed, slightly 3D picture.  I'm quite happy with it, and it won first place for framed or mounted tatting at the NC State Fair.




Here are a couple of Shawna's flowers, made according to the book:





How I did it:  I found a copy of Van Gogh's painting online and printed it the size I wanted my picture to be.  I put that into a  plastic page protector.  As I went along, I compared my tatting to the picture to judge shaping and size.  As each piece was completed, I taped it to the page protector.  Once they were all done, then I sewed them onto the fabric.  A word of warning if you ever attempt something similar:  I made the printout 10 inches tall, planning to use a 8x10 frame since that's a common size.  I didn't realize that while an 8x10 picture fits inside the frame, the actual opening in the front is a bit smaller, so it looked too crowded.  Luckily, I had an 8 1/2 x 11 frame on hand and switched to mounting for that size.
More free advice:  picture frames in stores are expensive.  Framed pictures in thrift shops are cheap.  Take a measuring tape with you to the thrift shop to check the size.  Find one the right size and you can throw out the old picture and add your own.
 

4 comments:

  1. Lovely! I'm not sure I'd have the patience to figure that out, but since I love Van Gogh paintings I can see why you were so inspired.

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  2. Wow!!! Spectacular!

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  3. I said on facebook this morning I would come to your blog, that is a lovely picture, I love sunflowers and you made them look so real, I can see why the picture inspired you, well done on doing s great job

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