This commission was for a white Ordination stole with a pale colour scheme. My client was a musician and a singer who played the cello and sang in a choir and wanted her stole to reflect this.
As a starting point we focused on the cello shape and a particular piece of choral music ‘Sing joyfully unto God our strength’. I looked to cubism as a way of abstracting the cellos shape, concentrating on the features that make it a ‘cello’, the scroll at the top, the pegs, the f hole and the c-bout. Having abstracted the cello, where the strings crossed the image I thought of making these the musical stave. The musical notation needed to be correct in its shape and position on the stave.
This stole was created using machine applique and free machine stitching for the wording.