Winter Topiary

Winter’s icy hues are artfully employed in creating this fabulous topiary tree, the second in a series of seasonal designs loosely based on the designer’s own concept of botanical prints.

Radiant white poinsettias are depicted in the challenging long and short stitch, gently shading from white to the palest of pink-lavenders. Pomegranates appear to be made of brocade, shimmering with an inner light of their own. Frosty grapes add texture, and hibernal cherries are worked in a delicate needlelace. Silver holly leaves add to the glistening effect and sprigs of wintergreen with beaded berries complete this botanical fantasy. All flow from a matte finish silver cache pot, banded with jewel-like accents.

I sought to create a composition that portrayed the frigid, brittle aspects of winter as experienced by those who live in the north; sometimes it is dark and gloomy, but other times this world of white snow and crystal icicles is so bright and cold on a cloudless winter day that’s its brilliance takes one’s breath away. Winter Topiary offers some of that crystal hardness, but all is softened by the fruits of last autumn’s harvest.

The dominant feature of this composition is the luminous white poinsettia which is rendered in five of the most pastel tints—from the palest pink to the purest white. It is meant to symbolize the impressions of winter: the snow and the Christ child.

Winter Topiary is stitched on a blue congress cloth and is worked in a variety of silks, cotton, and metallic threads.