Quilled picture for Enid

Quilled picture for Enid, a photo by Philippa Reid on Flickr.

Enid recently made some new curtains for her bedroom using a very attractive fabric that is boldly printed with leaves and flowers. We decided that the pattern would be eminently 'quillable' ... so she asked me to create a complementary quilled picture for the bedroom wall.

I took a piece of left-over fabric, scanned the individual elements of the pattern and re-arranged them on the computer using Photoshop to create a layout that I could quill.

For the large flowers, I made two different types of centre: one is a slightly domed solid coil in dark green, and the other is a punched-out disc of paper covered with teardrop shapes that have been glued in position on their edges. The petals are made using vortex coils, moulded into shape, with thin 'veins' of contrasting colours glued along their inner sides.

For the blue flowers, I made large white solid coils, covered them in tiny 'squished' coil crescent shapes in blue, then edged the solid coils with two layers of on-edge blue teardrops.

The greeny yellow globe flowers were made using punched discs of paper covered in crimped strip solid coils.

The golden leaves are made up from eye shapes, with contrasting strips glued along their inner edges to create veins.

The interlinking stems are cut from solidly glued ring coils moulded around shampoo bottles and other objects that produced the required degrees of curve.

I assembled all the pieces separately, using pins on a piece of clingfilm-covered mounting board. Then the whole piece was assembled on a 12" x 10" backing sheet to fit within the recessed frame.

I'm very pleased to report that Enid loved it!!