A woman and her craft: Charlene Mullen

I am inspired by the work of Charlene Mullen. Her work is featured in the January issue of House and Garden UK. As you can see from the following photos her designs are quirky and fun. She uses traditional embroidery and folk motifs and the end result is beautiful. I particularly enjoyed reading about the process behind her Scenic cushions:
" Charlene begins by doing pencil drawings of her chosen landscape from life. Back at the studio she adapts the drawing to fit the format of the cushion.  Next, she makes a scale drawing and adjusts the density of black and white to achieve the perfect balance. She replicates the scale drawing on tracing paper, and sends it to India, where it is transferred to cloth in the traditional way-by making pinholes along the lines of the drawing, placing it over the cloth and dusting it with removable black powder to create an outline of the design, which is then hand-embroidered." 
Charlene's inspiration: 'I drew on ideas I had shelved when I was designing for fashion,' she says. 'I had a huge collection of things just waiting to come out.' She also takes inspiration from 'Swiss paper cuts, Palio di Siena flags, naive skin tattoes and her Persian cat.'

If you would like to learn more about Charlene Mullens

visit http://www.charlenemullen.com/home.html

~inspiring~

Images via House and Garden and Charlene Mullen  website.

Reference from feature article written by Jennifer Goulding in the January 2010 issue of House and Garden.