Jill Draper’s Hyper-Realistic Embroideries

These incredibly realistic scenes from rural life have been painstakingly created by a British artist in her own living room - sewn using just a needle and thread. Jill Draper, 62, renders pictures of rural life and shimmering seascapes in her embroidered tapestries recreating scenes with astonishing accuracy from photographs. Each picture measuring around 15 by 30 inches takes up to 120 and contains hundreds of thousands of stitches done by hand and machine.

Jill Draper's tapestry of a heather path looks so realistic that it's difficult to tell the difference between it and the photograph. Her embroidery is on the left. (Click to Enlarge)

Jill paints the landscape onto padded bridal satin or pure silk with fabric dye which she fixes with heat before heavily embellishing the material with stitches to create depth. She uses household cotton or Terylene and picks from her thousands of colours applied with a sewing machine or darning hoop and hand sews special detail with pure silk.

 

She sews for around six hours every day and relies on natural light to distinguish between the hundreds of similar shades. Taking care to limit her hours is vital as the intense bursts of concentration required can make her nauseous.

Jill works as a full-time embroidery artist and has sold hundreds of pictures through galleries and as private commissions for between £500 to £3,000 for a piece.

 

 

 

  

[via The Daily Mail and Telegraph]