This is the third reincarnation for my Tree of Life embroidery. A new life now as a traditional firescreen.

Having moved house and business last year to a 2 bedroomed bungalow in Stubbington near Fareham we inherited a log burner. With less walls to hang all our pictures up it struck me that I could convert my embroidery into
a traditional firescreen to stand in front of the log burner.

I undid my previous framing removing the double mount and replacing it with a wooden slip. This slip I hand painted to match colour of the aida x-stitch fabric. I knew exactly what moulding I was going to make the frame from. A gold stick of moulding that I had kept for many years as I had always wanted to use it for a piece of work. It was a perfect fit for this piece as the pattern resembled the flames of a fire. I resized the ultra vue glass and my husband cut and japanned a backboard. I drew a design which he used to cut out two shaped feet. He then japanned these and bolted them through the bottom of the frame. The finishing touches were a decorative handle ordered from Etsy and a few wooden ladybirds 🐞 to crawl along the frame.

The following is a description of the embroideries previous framing stories…..

After stitching the Tree Of Life in 1994 my mum kindly offered to have it framed. She took it to the Salvation Army who ran a framing shop near where she lived. The framing looked good until after becoming a picture framer I took it apart to see how it had been framed. Little did my mum know what the framer was going to do.
The work had been cut and stapled to a piece of hardboard. The acids in this board were leaching out and had already discoloured the edges of the fabric. Left in this way the embroidery would have been ruined by the acids in the hardboard and the fabric would have been completely discouloured. The outline of the tree was clearly visible on the backboard and the staples were beginning to rust. I was left with the bare minimum of fabric to work with so as not to show the stained fabric. I reframed it to conservation standard with a double mount, anti reflective glazing and an oak frame. It hung on the wall for many years.