Come into my parlour, said the spider....

I can't help it - I keep going back to bugs!!

The inspirations for this panel were old, peeling Russian icons, spiders webs and an Egyptian necklace of gold flies.

In the panel, the flies are caught in the spiders web, in various stages of distress. One is newly caught, one has given up the fight and one is completely wrapped in silk.


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The picture frame is made of calico, with knotted and torn strips machine applied and heavily stitched. This was first given a watercolour dye wash in shades of dark blue, grey and purple. Then it was painted with gold metallic powder in fabric medium. The edges were burnt in a candle flame to give an old, distressed effect.

Here is a close up of the panel.


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The background fabric is a piece of distressed velvet. On top of that is a piece of hand made silk paper, lightly coloured with silk paints and embellished with scraps of coloured silk in shades of red and gold and a piece of netting from a bag of supermarket oranges, all applied with free machine stitching in rayon and metallic threads. The first fly was built up onto the background with free machine stitching in red rayon thread over gold painted fabric. The second fly was made from a piece of gold painted calico and a scrap of fur fabric. The eyes were padded metallic fabric, divided with a piece of metallic thread, laced over a piece of card. The third fly has painted calico wings embellished with free machine embroidery and the body is covered with gold glass beads. The spider body is padded velvet laced over a piece of card, embellished with metallic thread and the legs are fancy cord finished with a bead.

Its a kind of experimental stumpwork!