Cathy Tipping missed her birthday this year because she was trying to finish a life-sized naked needlepoint. "The needlepoint took over my life," she says.

‘Kate’, the full-sized, photo realistic nude needlepoint woman Cathy created took three months to complete, and she was finishing it just one hour before the exhibition opening.

"It was very intense. I was gonna get it professionally stretched but I had to stretch it over a door in the end," she tells me.

Having spent the last year or so working from photos to create embroidered head portraits, Cathy moved on to the full female form as a technical challenge.

"Skin colour’s really hard," she says. "You have a limited pallet of what threads they produce."

In fact, after the thread manufacturers discontinued a particular shade of pink, Cathy had to go back and unpick a whole massive section of the work and redo it. Before she began stitching, Cathy took photos of her model in a professionally lit studio, then used Photoshop to create a simplified image to work from. "You manipulate the contrast and flatten it so it brings out only about six different colours," she explains.

The completed work is extremely striking. From far away it looks like a painting, with all the subtle soft gradations of skin tone that are needed to create that realism. It’s hard enough for some artists to achieve such an outcome using more conventional media, let alone a needle and thread.

"I feel like I understand it now – the craft," Cathy tells me. "Combining it with imagery and really bringing out the image and make it more tactile and colourful."

‘Kate’ is on display until October 25th at First Site gallery, 344 Swanston Street as part of a group textile show called South.
Cathy’s work will also be featuring in an upcoming exhibition called Girls Girls Girls at Carlton Hotel studios, 193 Bourke Street which opens on Thursday October 25th.

- Story by Cass Scott