Sorrento Style Stitchery

To take with me as little holiday projects to Italy, I made up these two stitchscape backgrounds in my 20cm hoop. I wasn't sure how much I would get done at the airports and on the plane so went with two options to be on the safe side, although ended up bringing them both back uncompleted! 

It was really nice to have such an engrossing project on the plane- made the two and a half hours fly by really quickly and I managed to get the bottom part of the first stitchscape nearly finished with french knots and sequin sea froth butting up against the textured hand dyed scrim 'sand'.

I generally worked on the stitchscape in the evenings on our hotel balcony, watching the stars come out and enjoying a late night coffee in the balmy open air. It is absolutely the best way to do your stitching and I highly recommend taking a travel box with you wherever you go just in case you find the time to sit down and sew. It heightens your hearing and sense of smell as you concentrate on making those tiny little needle movements, pulling the thread rhythmically through the canvas, adding layers and colour and texture each time. It is also very grounding and I work out a lot of personal issues, or make mental lists of things to do whilst I sew- if everyone sat down for fifteen minutes minimum a day to sew, the world would be a very different place.

So, this is where I am now with this little Sorrento style stitchscape. The final top yellow layer is being worked on, and I am halfway through adding the cross stitches to the spots in this bright, sunny print, then I can take out the tacking stitches which were used to hold the fabrics in place and start adding my final layers. The sun needs some rays, and I have something very special planned for that stretch of golden sand at the bottom there.

I love the colours in this piece, it's so vibrant and happy! Full of noise and peace, sea, sand and sunshine- very much like the lovely island that it was created for.