Lionel's Lighthouse

Lionel is feeling rather chuffed. He's been out in the blowing sea salt gales lovingly polishing his white washed lighthouse. It needs regular cleaning because it can get dirty rather quickly- especially when the seagulls use it for target practice. Boats sailing by rely on him to keep them safe and he takes his job very seriously, making sure he has back up batteries and lightbulbs for the big light at the top there and that the glass is clean from specks to ensure the light can be seen for miles around. This morning's spit and polish session has left the lighthouse looking top banana!

Luckily the sun is out today and the sea is relatively calm, although you will always get a few racing white horses so near to the rocks creating bubbles and spray as the waves hit the cliffs. Lionel is using the time to sit in the top room and work on his painting, he's a fine artist you know! Landscapes are his thing, especially watery ones.

It can get quite lonely sitting out there on his rock, although if the tide is really low you can walk back to the beach that opens up just under that cliff face. Usually though it's just Lionel so he amuses himself by reading, painting, listening to Radio 2, cleaning, and chatting to his pet seagull, Sebastian, whom he raised from a chick when he discovered him abandoned on the front doorstep of the lighthouse.

Lionel is surrounded by lots of different stitches in this piece, and I am especially pleased with the cliff face as it is so full of texture and interest!! Originally it started out as quite a boring three-colour seed stitch cover, but then I remembered I had some interesting yarns from Stef Francis, and I twisted a bouclé yarn with a metallic one and couched them down, twisting them into random shapes to create the impression of jutting rock surfaces. These were then bedded in with some little french knots, and I also decided to try my vertical whip stitch (usually reserved for working on the top of running stitch) on the top of the seed stitch. Because the seed stitches are going in all directions it has created some interesting twists in the whip stitch which I am very pleased with.
Further back in the rock face I have covered the little scratch lines printed into the fabric with tiny single strand straight stitches, and added some rough scrub greenery using fly stitch with little french knot pink flowers.

I love variegated embroidery threads, especially if you can find a fabric that it completely matches. My cloudy sky print fabric already has the gradient colours to make up the sky so all it need was a single strand back stitch following some of the heavier lines, and the colour of the thread did the rest.
The seagulls have been built up with two fly stitches over the top of each other to make them slightly more weighty- although the 'further away' gulls are only a single fly stitch using two strands of thread.
I have also used a variegated thread in the whip stitch sea layer. The fabric I used was a horizontal stripe and I worked rows of running stitch following the outline of the fabric layer below, changing the thread colour to match the printed colour stripes, one of them being a variegated colour thread. These layers I went over with single strand whip stitch, but I have also blended the colour change within the whip stitch if that makes sense?

The lighthouse itself was bondawebbed to the fabrics below (glued with special iron on glue paper in other words) and I love the effect this has had on the running stitch worked on the white fabric. Because the bondaweb doesn't allow the fabric to move, the holes where the needle has passed through have stayed as quite prominent holes, giving the appearance of brickwork when you get rows of them- exactly the effect I didn't know I wanted! Most of the lighthouse has been edged with bullion knots, apart from the grey grating level (where the lighthouse light shines from) which has been edged with whip stitch, and the hat on the top which has been edged with blanket stitch. My windows are little satin stitch rectangles with additional straight stitch frames at the top and bottom. Once I had finished the lighthouse the white didn't quite stand out enough from the blue of the background, so I have tried adding a little shading also by putting long single strand back stitches just underneath the bullion knots and going back over the stitches, couching them in to the beginning and ends of the bullion knots. It just adds a little bit of 3D-ness which you can't really see but helps the lighthouse stand out.

I love how easily you can create surf and bubbles. Originally the bottom layer of fabric just had the satin stitches over certain colours. The plan at the start was to cover the entire layer but then I decided that would be too much and just left it with the stitches it had. Once the rest of the piece was completed there was still something missing from this layer though, until I added in the tiny little white french knots. I have kept them to one side of the satin stitches to try and create the impression of direction towards the cliffs, and varied their size so the weight is at the front of the 'wave'. The knots are only a single strand with either one or two twists, and they aren't particularly neat but, as I was explaining to someone in my workshop a couple of weekends ago who was french knotting clouds, sometimes you don't want perfect little knots because they are far less interesting and look harder, less natural than the messy ones.

I hope next time you see a lighthouse you will think of Lionel and give him a wave!!