Perforated Paper and Photographs

Bouquet Salpicon

counted work (in this case essentially blackwork patterns)

on perforated paper with a photographic transfer

The photograph that is the transfer beneath

Cattleya Maxima

Cattleya Maxima




The photograph that is the base of Bouquet Salpicon.

Originally this was a pile of autumn leaves I photographed one November outside our local library branch.

My newest body of work within mixed media embroidery is non-traditional counted work on photo-transferred perforated paper. It is not as difficult as it sounds. I take one of my original photographs and either print it directly on perforated paper or print it on transfer paper and then iron it onto perforated paper.

I know that some people shy away from stitching on paper because they consider it only a temporary surface, but I have seen perforated samplers in the LDS Church Museum in Salt Lake City that were done around 1870. Good enough for me.

I rarely make a graph or even much of a sketch when I work on an original piece. Because of my dyslexia which is getting stronger as I age, I have a hard time following intricate patterns. So what I do is get a firm idea of what I want the finished piece to look like and then start stitching until that piece is done. Sometimes it looks like my original idea and sometimes it looks better.


I use Impressions, a silk/wool blend of light yarn on perforated paper. Rarely I will use #12 perle coton; and in one recent piece I used Laura Perin's hand-dyed threads to great effect.


The pieces so far have all had flower subjects, a poinsettia-looking flower (Bouquet Salpicon which is now at the sales gallery at EGA national headquarters); an orchid (Cattleya Maxima from the collection of Ron and Sue Cosner). An unnamed and unphotographed third piece. The fourth piece I will start later this morning, having printed the transfer paper, but not yet pressed the transfer onto the perforated paper.