Liz Maidment - Everybody's New Obsession

Liz Maidment of France does the most amazing embroidery.  It is not merely embroidery, she has taken it to a new level.

Nearly everyone in our group just fell in love with her work.  The miniature landscapes overwhelmed us with their twists and surprises.

In the two photos below, I give you an idea of scale by putting my hand over the frame.  

Disclaimer:  My hand is not really that fat looking, I do have long slender fingers that could be piano playing fingers if my parents would have given me piano lessons.

The trees and flowers below are on the same scale as the field above.  Most of her pieces were pretty much this same size.

 

 This scape below was larger, more the size of a dish towel.  the aspect of minimal stitching really appealed to me.

The ochre colored piece was sort of in between the others sizes.  Liz uses the backgrounds as a major part of her pieces.  The embroidery is what makes the backgrounds come alive.

She uses tiny bits of fabric pieces to make the flowers and animals come alive against the stitching and the backgrounds.

I commented that in the whole exhibit, there was probably not a complete yard of fabric!

Now I need you to continue to look at the photos and I will show you my idea at the end of the post.  You will find it......uh...…...interesting.

 

 Ok....here you are at my attempt to recreate the background.

I sent off to Amazon Prime to get a Paint Atomizer.  It consists of two pipes set in an L angle.  the negative pressure of blowing though one pipe draws up paint through the other pipe and sprays the paint on the board.

There is a pretty steep learning curve with the equipment.

Yep, pretty steep.

I got everything set up to blow paint on the background fabric.  I tore newspaper for the masking material.  And dipped the pipette into the paint.

And blew.

Nothing.

Harder

Nothing.

I changed the angle on the paint atomizer, and blew.

Nothing.

Harder.

Nothing.

Changed the angle again.

Blew.

I nearly passed out from hyperventilation.  Really.  I had to sit there on the driveway with my head reeling while I recovered enough to continue living.

Nothing.

So I put my hand up in front of the pipette, and blew.

And blew a startling blast of green paint on the entirety of my bare palm.

So now I had the blowing part (partially) figured out, I had to get the control part figured out.

See that big blob of green?  That was my first blow, a bit of over doing it.  I worked out a system of blowing a few spirts and then recovering from hyperventilating, blowing a bit, hyperventilating a bit.

Right.  I realized at this point that I had purchased green, purple, black, white and yellow paint.

Not blue.

I guess I wasn't planning on any skies...…...right

That is OK, I need a lot more practice.  And better lung capacity.

But it already looks way cool as a new medium to use as a backgound.

Right?