A Birthday Gift

My dear friend Rebecca has a birthday right around the corner. Rebecca is my daughter Becca's Godmother and her namesake. She is an amazingly gifted jeweler,artist and gardener as well as one of my most treasured friends. I have just finished her birthday gift and I wanted to share it with you.

The basis of this piece is the back cover of a vintage gardening book. The end pages of the book have images of the Zone Planting Map Of the US. I mounted an old work glove (one of a pair of gloves that I rescued from the side of the street after they had weathered thru the winter weather) to the cover. I filled the glove with strips of various textured fabrics and then added two flowers and a leaf .

The flowers are created from fabric/paper that I overpainted with pink and yellow paints. I stitched around each petal and then handstitched the petals to a center of felted beads. Once all of the petals were secure I added beaded stamens. the stems are created by wrapping chenille pipe cleaners with several different green yarns and then sewing the stems to the flower.

The leaf was created using a similar stem and then sewing strips of ruched ribbon together with seed beads.

Here is a detail shot of the pink flower.


Once I had secured the flowers and the leaf inside the glove I felt that it was not quite done yet.
I decided to ad the quote at the bottom of the piece and then felt that the piece was complete. The quote reads" Art is when you hear a knocking on your soul and you answer."



For hanging, I added two gromets to the top corners and twisted on a piece of 16 g copper wire with some special beads for embellishment.