Bluebell Stitchery

Everywhere I go at the moment there are Bluebells! Peeping out from behind trees, carpeting woodland floors or nestled together in clumps under hedgerows. It has given me a mass of inspiration for a new stitchscape- I'm thinking, silver birch trees, bold blue print fabrics at the forefront fading out to green towards the 'back' of the forest and changing into pale blue for the sky with lots of blue bullion knots and long beads at the front, dappled lighting and green skinny ribbons and tapestry yarns imitating the long spindly leaves. (Not much to pack into a 20cm round hoop!)

The Mother keeps commenting on how early everything is out at the moment. Surely Bluebells are a May thing? Weirdly in our garden, the purple Bluebells were all out first, ages and ages ago, then the blue Bluebells followed later. We have a natural (abandoned to fend for itself) patch at the bottom of our garden where they are all a pale lilac colour, not a blue one in sight!

So, seeing as how I've been on holiday this week, I thought there wasn't a better time to get cracking on this new stitchscape idea and started cutting up some layers!

I really like making trees although this is the first time I have put together different coloured branches like this. Usually my trees are long strips which go straight up through the piece but this time I have wiggles and branches to play with. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to embellish the little twig branches in- should I attempt green leaves?

So far it's going really well but I admit I spent all day Tuesday stitching and watching Midsomer Murders. It would be fabulous if that could be my life! Just sewing and watching DVDs or listening to the radio, or sitting in the garden listening to the birds... I would be able to complete my stitchscapes in half the time they take me now when I have to work in the stitchery sessions around daily work and commuting life.

I really liked following the lighter spots in the above blue print fabric and translating them into chunky french knots. If you look from quite far away you almost don't notice that they are 3D and the texture comes as a slight surprise as they blend in so well. In the last stitchscape (Flowing River) I worked little circles of satin stitch into the green spot fabric I used and I really loved the effect this created. The best part about making lots of stitchscapes is that they feed into one another and whilst it is nice to try and find different techniques for the same fabric to see how far you can push it, it is also nice to revisit a technique that has worked well, so I have made the same satin stitch again in the Bluebell stitchscape. They still remind me of little molehill mountains far off in the distance.