Chinese Whispers - a collection

Rather later than I intended, here are the pages I produced for the other members of the Chinese Whispers Challenge. We all saw each others pages and original inspiration for the first time at a recent meeting. Here are my contributions in chronological order.

Rosemary's page.

This first one was for Rosemary. The fabric picture I received reminded me so much of a bear wandering through a landscape. The original photograph was rather interesting. I showed a rather beautiful valley called Bryce Canyon in the USA. The shape I had thought of as a bear was actually a shaped rock in the photo graph. So my landscape was truly fictitious. The image is constructed using simple kantha style stitches for texture and commercial fabrics appliquéd onto a black background.

Brenda's picture.

The second picture had already been to Rosemary, so I was working from her stitched picture. The image I received reminded me of the story of Jonah and the whale. Hence my own hand stitched image using a variety of accidentally dyed dyecatchers. I used back stitch and simple kantha style stitches for the image. What amused me when I saw Brenda's original inspiration was that it was the famous painting of the wave!

Bernice's picture.

This third image had come to me through versions made by Brenda and then by Rosemary. As a result the original image came as rather a surprise. It showed a snowy lakeside scene in Handforth, Cheshire. My own version was based on what I saw was an interpretation of the four seasons. This used my own dyed fabrics, free machine embroidery and some sheer fabrics cut using a soldering iron.

Mary's picture.

The inspiration for this one was a seaside scene which I received from Rosemary. She had interpreted a scene from Brenda, who in turn had received one from Bernice. The photos for this were printed onto silk and allowed to fray a little before being handstitched in place. My photos came from a trip made to Llandudno in Wales. The background is made up of sheer fabrics over different colours of satins used both matte side up and shiny side up. The original inspiration was the photo of a lighthouse. So perhaps I wasn't so very far out with this one.

Chris' page.

This last page was inspired by a rather nice stitched picture of a pigeon. It reminded me so strongly of a song we were singing with the choir that Rosemary, Chris and I sing with. I just had to use the information from the song. It is one of a series about pigeons by Guy Turner. This particular song was "Wood pigeon in the Weald" and uses a pub and place names around Hartfield in Sussex. The hand drawn images were printed onto silk and then bondawebbed in place. The stitching was all by hand with many french knots. The phrase on the grey border at the bottom of the image was directly taken from the song. The original image from Chris was a Kiwi bird. So her pages have travelled rather a long way from New Zealand to the UK.