Moorland Stitchscape

Finished!!! My Moorland Stitchscape is finally completed. It feels like it has taken forever to finish this one but there have been many distractions of the crocheted variety and I did have to take a break to give my wrists a rest so in terms of actual hours to complete, it is probably the same as the others.

There has been quite a lot of love for this one over on Instagram and Facebook which was really lovely so thank you to everyone who commented or liked this little embroidery. It always means a lot to get positive feedback as it can be quite nerve wracking opening up your own personal work to the world and its judgements. The photos here don't quite do the piece justice as outside it is currently a gloomy grey with icing sugar snow bits falling from the sky making it hard to take sunny, bright photos.

One of the reasons I love stitching these little scenes is that you can really lose yourself in them; wander off past the purple hillock, skimming your hands over the tall grasses, keeping an eye out for peckish snakes lurking in the rocks. Perhaps you can hear a lark way up in the blue sky, or the buzz of busy little bees in the heather; smell the fresh air and cleanliness way up on those hill tops. Yup, I could definitely lose myself in this one!

I've tried to push my experimenting just a little further in this piece, which I have talked about in previous posts, using padded applique for the rocks, adding in more fancy yarns for texture and playing with tapestry yarns for bulkier knots. There are many textures to be found here, much like the real moorland; smooth long stitches, the rise and fall of bullion knots, clusters and speckles of french knots, seed stitches like freckles on the surface of the fabric. There are stripes, swirls, dots, squares, cross hatches, thin lines, thick lines and squiggles, and it all makes me very happy.

I have already started a new piece on a similar theme to try and push some of these techniques further. It is only a small hoop, 15cms, but I just want to play with tapestry and fancy yarns, and loved the combination of the green and purple. I've bought several new colours of deep purple Anchor tapestry yarns which I am thinking of clustering together in a riot of berry tones, layering on top of each other with flashes of green. It sounds good in my head, I've just got to get it out on the hoop!

It is quite hard work pulling and pushing the larger eyed needles needed for tapestry yarn through all of my fabric layers so this really will be a slow process as my hands aren't great at the moment. As always I will keep you updated with how it goes!