Dry Stone Meadow Stitchscape

I really love this piece. It reminds me of summer walks on holiday in Yorkshire which has a seemingly endless network of dry stone walls in various states of repair. If you joined up every single dry stone wall in Yorkshire you would probably reach to Australia! Best of all, is the stone print fabric which has lent itself so well to being padded out and stitched all over, I am rather chuffed with this, and particularly enjoy the way the french knots tumble over the top in a very pleasing manner. It helps break up the starkness of the line of wall, and hides any loose fabric tendrils which have escaped the needle turning technique employed to cover the felt with the cotton print.

The delicate flowers are a fabulous combination of bullion knots and french knots in different thicknesses. The darker yellow knots use three strands of DMC embroidery thread and the smaller knots which are the palest shade of yellow, are only two. As well as using different weights of thread to create thickness, the size of the french knots is also changed by how many times the thread gets wrapped around the needle. For example, if you had two strands of thread and wrapped around the needle five times, your knot would be approximately the same size as a three stranded thread wrapped around the needle three times. There are lots of different ways to achieve all these effects and I love playing with them and experimenting as I go.

This is only a little embroidery, another 15cm piece, so I haven't tried to pack masses of texture and layers in. I wanted the focus to be near the bottom with the wall as the main diva on stage, although of course this doesn't mean that the fabrics above the wall don't get the royal treatment and I've copied the lines already printed on the fabrics as closely as I could. Luckily for me, they are beautiful and diverse prints which lend themselves well to this kind of stitch.

The beautiful chevron print pattern reminds me of a wheat field, and as I've back stitched along the straight lines, reminds me even more of a field just been harvested with the tractor wheel marks just visible. To kind of enhance this mental image, I've popped some slightly paler golden french knots which hint at hay bales abandoned mid-field. You'll notice that there are an awful lot of french knots in this piece- mad with dots!- and I've enhanced the white and grey polka dot fabric at the top with more white french knots which adds a fabulous texture without changing the pattern. 

Overall there is quite a limited range of stitches here; bullion knots, french knots (of course), back stitch, straight stitch, fly stitch and seed stitch. My go to guys for a beautifully textured piece!

Have a lovely evening! x