Stitcher:

Designer:

Stitcher's comments:

The canvas for this piece was dyed as an afterthought while I was working on larger fabrics (in a 1994 class with Carolyn Dahl), but turned out to be the best of the lot. I had always seen the dyed design as a flower, but objectively there were only bright spots of color which were reminiscent of one. Two years ago I finally embroidered on it, trying to enhance the happy accidents and obscure the jarring notes. Stitching was a constant battle between the image in my head and the canvas as an objective viewer might see it---more so than when working on a plain ground, since elements I had not intentionally placed, and had not thought much about, kept jumping to the fore and calling attention to themselves. I think this made the final image more vibrant than I could have made it without resorting to the random effects of dyeing.