Alberta Rose

Completed Alberta Rose

I have just completed and submitted my 4" X 4" Alberta Rose canvas to the Alberta Flood Rose Project. So, here is a description of how I constructed my piece for this project.

Fibre background on black canvas

Close up view of the felted background

I started by painting my canvas black. My next layer was a section of a needle felted piece. This was made with several fibres sandwiched between pieces of organza and then needle felted with my embellisher machine.  Once the piece was completely needle felted, I heated it with the heat gun. This melts the organza and other synthetic fibres fairly quickly, so I had to be diligent in making sure it did not disintegrate.

The rose itself was made by thread painting on two layers of organza. However, the difference between what I did and what most people do when thread painting is that I did not totally thread paint the entire surface. I just outlined the petals and some highlighting on the petals. The petals were then cut out with a soldering iron. The petals were attached by sewing them at the centre.

Perle cotton stamens

The stamens were a little tricky to make. I painted Number 8 White Perle Cotton with yellow acrylic paint and cut the stamens to size. These were then coated with 3 coats of clear nail polish. I then dipped the stamen ends into hot glue to form the ends. Once dried, I embossed the glue using a Versamark stamp pad and yellow embossing powder. When you heat the glue to emboss it, the glue starts to re-melt quite quickly, so I simply just reformed the ends to the shape I wanted.

French knots added to build up the centre

These stamens were attached with glue and then I added the french knots in light green, white and yellow embroidery floss to build up the centre and help to hold the stamens in place.

I mounted the rose on the background with gel medium. I also coated the black canvas with gel medium to give it a bit of gloss.

All in all, I am very happy with the rose and am very happy to be part of this project.

Finished