Northern Lights

I love this #inthehoop stitchscape. It's so colourful- and actually nothing like the Northern Lights that I saw in Iceland, but inspired by them instead. I have a kind of mottled spacey fabric which I used, covering each colour splodge with similar coloured thread.  I have also jazzed this little one up with glittery metallic thread! These lights should glow after all.

The rest of the 'scape is quite simple really, fly stitches following the exact pattern in grey, white seed stitch over a plan white cotton, and back stitch, satin stitch, cross stitch and pistil stitch in the bottom abstract flower layer. I have even made my own cord using the white and peach embroidery threads to hide the rough edges of this fabric. I could have put bullion knots on the top of my metallic threads but decided that I liked the simplicity of the stems. They reminded me of grasses reflecting the snow.

The dark blue layers are a combination of running stitch, back stitch and a kind of double whip stitch. I love experimenting with whip stitches. In this case the stitch encompasses two rows of back stitch. What do you think?

I would like to do another Northern Lights themed 'scape, perhaps with more truthful colours. Well- more truthful as the eyes of the camera see it. In real life they are more of a white glow than luminescent green! Perhaps I could go totally abstract and just have a stripe of colour fabric across a background of dark blue. Nothing else at all.

I have also now finished my mini Snowy Alps 'scape. I decided when I put all of the #inthehoop 'scapes together that the Winter season was decidedly lacking. The mountain was a complete accident really as it was an off cut that fell out of the fat quarter when I picked it up and I didn't bother cutting it down, just plonked it on and hoped for the best. Happily it is now a focus of the background framed by my gorgeous trees, and looks spectacular (even if I do say so myself) with the vertical whip stitch creating furrows in the snow. Perhaps they are Yeti trails down the mountain?

The mid-ground is perhaps a little busy but I liked the opportunity to use my cotton pod fabric which I've had for a while and never used. Not a lot really happened in this layer stitchwise other than a few straight stitches and tiny french knots. The foreground fabric is one of my newbies and I have followed the line of the pattern with fly stitch fronds. I'm not entirely sure about the purple french knots but I don't hate them enough to remove them. It needed some colour but I didn't think that a bright colour would be right, and kept running through the options in my head. Perhaps blue? Yellow would be too much. Green is not a flower colour. Orange is too bright, pink too garish... argh! The purple stays.

I don't know if you can really tell from these images, but the trees have a combination of back stitch, whip stitch and pekinese stitch with snowy french knots caught on the tree bark and branches. I do love these trees, and this bark print fabric. I can foresee it being used for many trees in the future. A whole forest of them.

Some more beauties to add to my '#inthehoop stitchscape range!