Since there is so much Woodlawn Plantation information this year and even photos of ribbon winners, I'm not going to write one large article about the 2010 exhibit. Instead, I'll just mention things I noticed over several blog postings. I don't want to repeat what you've already read or seen elsewhere, after all.
I saw a great piece of silk ribbon embroidery at Woodlawn. It didn't win a ribbon so it's not in the photo album Woodlawn Plantation folks posted online. I'll have to describe it for you: It is a tall and narrow piece, probably almost three feet tall and perhaps a foot wide, framed in a plain glossy black frame. The design is of bamboo, a large round upright stalk and a smaller curved stalk making a sort of backwards D shape. Both stalks were covered with tiny branching stems and bamboo leaves.
The piece was 100% ribbon embroidery. The bamboo stems and leaves were in 5-6 shades of green, ranging from a very dark, almost black, green to pale green for the smallest and newest bamboo leaves. The background was done in upright straight stitches using cream silk ribbon. The stitches varied randomly in length but the overall effect was of either handmade paper or a fabric either painted or stitched in the Japanese style. It was very effective.
I think the size helped make this a wonderful piece. The amount of background helped give the silk ribbon embroidery room so that it didn't look crowded and the overall size of the piece helped make the silk ribbon look natural from a distance. This really did give the impression of a Japanese painting on rice paper.
The stitcher's name was Lynn Krysicki Bayer and I think that the canvas was labeled Commercial, meaning it was a painted canvas.
I browsed all the great silk ribbon embroidery shown on the River Silks website and found this Terry Dryden piece to show you a vaguely similar background.
