Burr's Redoute flowers

bungadora said

I don't have a clue what makes a flower 'redoute' but I've recently been experimenting with stuffed shapes. My current favorite technique to get a 3D look is to outline the shape with either backstitches or chain stitches and then to fill it in with detached buttonholes stitches. Before anchoring the last row to the bottom, I use a miniscule wad of cotton batting to make the shape pop off the background.

One of my stumpwork books suggests using layers of felt as padding with the first layer being the smallest and the last layer being just a tad smaller than the shape. The felt is attached to the ground with stab stitches and covered with satin stitches.

I believe that is the name of the French artist who originally painted the pictures. I remember in the far distant past, my Mother had a book of the Redoute prints, and I would pore over them, wishing I could draw like that!

Gillian

Felt is what I usually see--sometimes a single piece, sometimes layers of decreasing size as you get closer to the ground fabric (depending on how much padding you want).

Best wishes, Ericka

In the method used in the book shapes are outlined in split stitch first, and then overlain with a combination of satin and long and short stitch so the embroidery is quite flat with padding used on only a few key areas for emphasis. It's sort of in that grey area between straight embroidery and stumpwork, I would think.

Gillian wrote

Correct Gillian. His prints pop up everywhere once you're familiar with them. I actually decoupaged a small cabinet with his roses a couple of years ago.

The full name of the book is Redoute's Finest Flowers in Embroidery by Trish Burr (2002) publisher Milner. Other than this omission in instruction, I've found it to be quite thorough so far. Dora

Yes, that is what I'm familiar with. Anne talked about detached buttonholing and filling with polyfill. That's for a different type of effect/embroidery than what Dora is talking about. I have Burr's book.

Dianne

Ericka wrote Felt is what I usually see--sometimes a single piece, sometimes layers of decreasing size as you get closer to the ground fabric (depending on how much padding you want).

Thanks Ericka. Time to dig through my stash to find that felt scrap I guess. Dora

I have done a couple of these and I used felt. It worked very well and the piece is quite eyecatching.

Here is one place to have a look

"Dawne Peterson" ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

Redoute translates as formidable, often seen used in French in connection with fortifications, old citadels, that type of thing.

In this case, and looking at the link, I would think they mean formidable in the sense that they are formidably well executed and in an exact manner, all same Audubon.

That's my guess anyway, I know redoute is used in that manner.

In this case, "Redoute" refers to the famous botanical artist Pierre Joseph Redoute (who was, incidentally, an acquaintance of Audubon's).

Best wishes, Ericka