THE [stitched] FOREST

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Small glimpses of the forest floor, made with stitched paper, hand embroidery and paper sculpture, framed.

Small sections of the forest floor, reproduced in stitched paper, hand embroidery and paper sculpture, displayed in antique jars and boxes.

  The organic shape of scavenged rusty metal is a jumping-off point for vessels that support tiny bits of the forest floor. 

  Made from fabrics eco-dyed using leaves from the woods where I used to walk daily, the piece combines hand quilting & embroidery to embody memories of the mushrooms, moss & lichen that I saw on those walks. A souvenir of my life before Scleroderma, a reminder to myself that what has been lost to me is still alive in the world, & a love song to the forest floor.

A daily project that took more than a year to complete, this section of the forest floor features fabric and paper sculptured mushrooms, hand embroidered mosses, leaves made from upcycled used coffee filters and more.

 In my woods, I have counted at least 27 different species of native trees.  As homage to these trees, and the importance of them in my life personally and the life of the local ecosystem, I have re-created a single leaf from each of these trees.

  Like stitched samplers of old, except three dimensional.  Using an antique printer's tray, I created a variety of things I see on my forest walks, out of stitched and sculpted paper, wire, hand embroidery and beads.

  Still in-progress, this will be a large accordion-fold book featuring paper/fabric images of various spots along my most frequent woods walk, highlighting specific flora and fauna that I have seen there. Once all the pages are assembled, the piece will be part quilt, part artist book, part nature journal and part field guide.

In 2018, I became a moth-er (it's like being a birder, but with moths).  I hang a blacklight outdoors, and photograph the beautiful diversity of moths that come to visit.  For this project, I am hand-embroidering my favorites onto machine stitched paper backgrounds, mounted onto blocks.