St John ~ My Next UFO

For those that may not know, a UFO in needlework is an Un-Finished Object.  I am working my way through some this year as part of the Tuesday Stitchers.

This is my next project to finish, St John.  The drawing is from an etching by Albrecht Durer, a true Renaissance artist.  This was meant to be part of a large wall hanging for behind the altar of the church I was attending at the time.  Time moved, the church group joined a major denomination and a wall-hanging of this sort was no longer allowed.  So poor St John got put aside for about 20 years.

St John is done in the needle-painting technique as taught to me by a lady who learned at the Royal School of Needlework in London.  He's worked with 2 threads of DMC cotton instead of silk as my budget would not allow for silk at the time, and the fabric is linen as it will last nearly forever if taken care of.   This piece was also worked on as a needlework demonstration I did for the Kerrville Arts & Crafts Festival here in Texas.

I don't know what the stain is, probably tea.  It won't hurt as this figure is meant to be cut out and appliqued onto a background.  I may do that or I could embroider a simple outline background and color it in with prisma color pencils, a very renaissance landscape of some sort.  I'll figure that out later.

I'm guessing this piece will take at least 2 months to finish not including the background, possibly longer.  The figure itself is 13" tall and 12" wide.

The originally planned hanging was to have the risen Christ in the center, flanked by all 12 apostles and would have included the 4 Archangels as well, all Durer figures.  Several other people were going to help but it still would have been a project that took a few years.  Needless to say, I will not be going down that road now.