PORTRAITS

Claire enjoys stitching imaginary people. Her portraits are often completed in pastel colours, the mood of the embroidery is set by the characters back story or Claire's emotions at the time of stitching.

Medusa Forlorn Claire likes working with myth and legends. Medusa is married to Icarus she has to keep her head covered because her uncontrollable snake hair doesn't like him.

Claire's portraits start life as detailed pencil sketches. The outlines are traced onto water soluble film and pinned onto the fabric ready to stitch with Madeira classic embroidery thread. When complete the soluble film is washed away to reveal the finished embroidery. She sometimes paints over the embroidery with diluted paint or dye. Scrubbing the work to distress the fibres to remove some of the the colour to create a muted effect.