Lots of #inthehoop's

I took four #inthehoop projects on holiday with me, and managed to finish two, nearly three of them. Another hoop I started before I went away and left at home, completing it the weekend I arrived back again- which means I have four to show you today! Such a lot of catching up to do.

I love the bottom layer of this hoop, it feels really nice under your fingertips as I have filled all of the petals with satin stitch in a thread that closely matches the colour underneath. As the print had patches of light and dark within the petals I have tried to copy this too which has worked really nicely. Rather than fill in the areas of gold ink (this is one of my lovely, gold tipped Japanese print fabrics) I have left them be which creates a really interesting raised appearance- had to be careful not to go over the lines!

The other colours of the chosen fabrics have also worked really well with my main print. I love the blues and zesty greens with the purple and yellow which show up so well on the back of the piece.

This has a kind of watery sunset thing going on. I wanted to hint at an ocean sunset where the orange of the sky was reflected in the water, done through mixing my layers of orange and blue together. There are a lot of spotted fabrics going on here so I think if I were going to try the same thing again I'd get more linear prints to help with the idea of waves.

It's quite a simple piece, no special stitches or special layouts, and didn't take me that long to do but the colours really make it work. I have used satin stitch, running stitch, french knots, bullion knots, seed stitch, whip stitch and cross stitch, and that's it apart from the little beads. The fabric I started with for this piece is the sunset coloured fabric at the top, and I've highlighted areas where the wash changes colour using a multicolour single strand of DMC embroidery thread which matched perfectly! I will definitely use this combination again.

This little one took longer to finish because of the tiny little details within it. I've got whip stitch, detached chain stitch, french knots, running stitch, bullion knots, back stitch, vertical whip stitch, seed stitch, straight stitch, couching, cross stitch and a kind of rough satin stitch. The trees are outlined with my own braid made from several lengths of the DMC embroidery thread used to stitch the texture onto the bark (following the pattern of a bark print fabric). I have tried to bring in a little bit of perspective by making the central tree with wider braid and the tree 'behind it' with a thinner braid.

There is a lot of whip stitch in this piece. The little leafy print at the bottom has whip stitch stems and a double whip stitch top, the top grey layer also has a whip stitch top; some of the lines in the bark are whipped and the knot in the tree has whip stitch to help create the circle. My dark green layer has the whip stitch going vertically across my running stitch which is a technique I love to use as it reminds me of furrows in fields.

The bottom layer has two different multicoloured green threads which brings unexpected changes in colour throughout. The stems are one selection of colour and the detached chain stitch leaves are another. Aren't they sweet?

Now this little stitchscape has been done for a kit design and I have counted each strand of thread used, made notes about the stitches and drawn templates of the fabric strips. Interestingly, there is a real mix of threads in this piece as I got muddled up with a thread order and ended up with boxes of DMC Cotón Pearl threads rather than DMC Cotton Mouline Stranded threads. The challenge has been to combine this with my existing collection of DMC Mouline and Anchor stranded threads but I think it has worked really well.

I have also used a rather interesting jute ribbon which arrives all tightly woven but can be stretched and teased out to create different widths, it really adds a bit of unexpected interest here and provides a barrier for my meadow field. The fabric used at the bottom is the blue version of the yellow print I've used in my Summer Sweet kit, but I loved it so much I decided it was OK to use the same print again. I deliberately didn't look at my Summer Sweet kit to see how I had approached this design before so I may have done a few things differently, or some things in the same way.

So in this piece we have whip stitch, running stitch, cross stitch, french knots, bullion knots, straight stitch, couching, detached chain stitch and satin stitch. Varied but still nice and easy. I don't currently have a deadline for getting these kits out as I still have to write up the instructions and put it all together, but I am hoping it will be over the next few weeks and of course you shall be the first to know!