Twin Peaks Embroidery II – Audrey Horne and Leland Palmer Portraits

As promised, here are two more of the Twin Peaks portraits I did for my show.

I am very pleased with the amount of detail I was able to get into these. They are currently framed in oval 8×10s.  I thought I would break down how I made the pieces because that is what people seemed most interested in while talking to me at my show…well that and how long thing took and you probably don’t want me to answer that one. A long time.

Doing Everyone’s hair was probably my favorite part. I just use a simple stem stitch for all of it but I alternated with different colors and amounts of embroidery floss to get the textures.

To get the texture on the sleeves of her sweater I modified colonial knots by holding them ultra loose before pulling through the knot, then packed hundreds and hundreds of them close together.

For the organic pattern on the front of her sweater I modified a lazy daisy stitch and connected them with stem stitches. I wish I had drawn them out first. I tend to do all my detail work freehand and it was a bit stressful with this particular part.

Leland ended up being one of my favorites. I decided on White Haired Leland because I feel it is most representative of the character on the show.

So, I use a lot of modified stitches in these portraits, it isn’t so much laziness as I need to achieve a certain texture and am just let down by the classic stitches that are established.

For Leland’s shirt I used a basic long and short pattern and placed whipped chain stitch in as the stripes. I modified a long and short pattern for the jacket  and used a satin stitch for the tie.

Things got a little dirty in the transportation for the show. Next time everything will get wrapped in plastic for that part, but I was so pressed for time I just didn’t get it done. But since they were a little mussed already I was encouraging those who mentioned wanting to touch to go ahead. A lot of people want to touch. Hey I understand, I am a tactile person and am always sad when I can’t touch things with interesting looking textures. Anyway I need to rewash and stretch them all before they go up at the Flightpath. I should probably go and do that now.