haystack in the needle

December 17, 2019 10:40 AM

Embroidery renderings of aerial views, and other landscapes and such, by English textile artist Victoria Rose Richards.
posted by cortex (18 comments total)

These are just magical!
posted by stripesandplaid at 10:54 AM on December 17, 2019

So lovely!
posted by exceptinsects at 10:56 AM on December 17, 2019

amazing! thanks for sharing!! now i'm obsessed. :)
posted by rude.boy at 11:02 AM on December 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

It’s amazing how the technique makes them seem almost hyper-realistic, rather than less realistic as you might expect based on the sort of low resolution. The textures are super detailed though, and she does a great job of picking the proper height of the viewpoint as well as the proper height of relief.
posted by SaltySalticid at 11:12 AM on December 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Imagining this work is done from a tethered balloon that the fabric artist stays up in for days or weeks, hoisting meals and extra yarn from a long tether.
posted by sammyo at 11:46 AM on December 17, 2019 [5 favorites]

Beautiful use of color, texture, and perspective (plus sprinkles of sheep!).

The world under your feet, all in the palm of your hand.
posted by cenoxo at 12:14 PM on December 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

I've always wanted to make a quilt like this. As a child, I would have loved to have played on aerial views. That sounds weird.
posted by b33j at 1:12 PM on December 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

The wee sheep! I like this so much.
posted by Caxton1476 at 1:17 PM on December 17, 2019

I agree with b33j: a quilt of demarcated fields and hedgerows and roads would make a pleasant counterpane!
posted by steef at 1:36 PM on December 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Another cool textile artist (who lives in Portland, cortex), is Jo Hamilton. Much larger scale, mostly portraits (some NSFW), some landscapes, including one Foster Blvd streetscape that hangs on the side of a bar in my neighborhood.
posted by outfielder at 2:41 PM on December 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Oh rad, outfielder. Thanks for the heads up.
posted by cortex at 3:43 PM on December 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

(And, saying something nice about corporate social media for once, I really like that when I went to follow her on Instagram the folks it mentioned to me as also following her already were a MeFite, a local artist friend, and a Scottish MeFite art friend. We cluster pretty good it turns out.)
posted by cortex at 4:32 PM on December 17, 2019

Haha! Yeah she runs in a lot of crews here, her husband is in Eyelids, which is how I came to know her work.
posted by outfielder at 4:59 PM on December 17, 2019

Beautiful and amazing!
posted by blue shadows at 5:36 PM on December 17, 2019

This is, to put beauty in crude terms, extremely my shit.

And has inspired me to do something similar for my next latch hook project: an aerial map of my childhood hometown (this won't actually be hard, because like the sheep, I also grew up surrounded by fields)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:45 AM on December 18, 2019 [5 favorites]

Oh man, please put that on Projects when it's done.
posted by cortex at 10:29 AM on December 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

Yes! I love these 🧵 sew much.
posted by sconbie at 3:46 AM on December 20, 2019

I'm only seeing this now, but wowie, very cool - thank you for posting it!
posted by LobsterMitten at 5:55 PM on January 10, 2020