Hoop Art Fuses Knotted Stitches with Painterly “Strokes” of Thread

The exquis­ite sur­face pat­tern in the above embroi­dery by Maria of Desert Eclipse Stu­dio was what first attract­ed me to her work. Using a com­bi­na­tion of knot­ted stitch­es and painter­ly appli­ca­tions of col­or, she com­bines them into visu­al­ly daz­zling hand embroi­dery scenes that cham­pi­on rich col­or schemes and vari­a­tions of texture.

The for­ay into por­traits rep­re­sents some of the first in her port­fo­lio. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Maria incor­po­rat­ed this same com­bi­na­tion of tight knots and long, grace­ful threads in inte­ri­or scenes–but, she’s just get­ting start­ed. It was just last year that she had ” 5–6 full box­es of floss and the guilt of it just sit­ting there final­ly became too much.” I hope she con­tin­ues with the portraiture!