This little stitchscape started life as an example of how to layer fabrics and tack them down, and was used in one of my recent classes. I find it's always helpful to have examples of the very beginning of a stitchscape to help my students see how little you have to do to create something beautiful. I take a whole folder of landscape/architectural/floral/artistic images to the classes with me to help jog an inspiration, and we try to match these images to the fabrics the students have brought with them, thinking about the colours and patterns and layering them up. Sometimes it is very clear the direction that the stitchscape will go in- lots of purples will inspire Heather or Lavender themes, blues and yellows have a seaside connotation.... As the teacher I have no control over what the students bring so it is fascinating every time to witness other people's thoughts on colour and co-ordination, and their interpretation of what a stitchscape actually means.
Many of the students come to the class with no idea whatsoever on what they want to create and can panic slightly if an inspiration doesn't come to them within seconds of walking in. It doesn't happen often to me but occasionally I have no inspiration either and you just have to play with the fabrics until an idea strikes, as was the case with this one. At the time of my first class I was frantically putting together examples but was stressing about making them too complicated or not complicated enough. I didn't have specific ideas on what I wanted to create and just rummaged through the great almighty stash and pulled out some fabrics I thought went together. At the ironing board, slices were cut out with a bit of a wiggle (something that amazes the students who think I spend enormous amounts of time carefully drawing out precise layered templates- I do occasionally, but most of the time I just wiggle the scissors and hope for the best) and layered up.
Even then I didn't find the layers or colours particularly inspiring, but if you treat one layer at a time, working through the patterns on the print and experimenting with stitches, it comes to you slowly and grows on you. Apparently the ladies who work at Closs & Hamblin (Tunbridge Wells branch), one of the main places I currently teach my classes, are constantly asked if the aim of the class is to finish the stitchscape within the five hours. Definitely not! From start to finish these stitchscapes (this one is in a 20cm hoop) will take probably a minimum of 10 hours and that's for a little one with relatively simple layers. The idea of the classes is to give you a base on which to start creating, and a nice environment where there is no pressure, just space to think creatively and have a go. I even have a special workshop music playlist which seems to work a treat and has had a few compliments itself! It's a mix of light jazz, modern chilled pop and some random crooney medleys, so something for everyone and just adds a bit of ambience to the room.
But anyway, I digress. I thought it was about time to start working on these little examples as I can't keep them hanging on forever, plus they are a much nicer travel size than the bigger pieces I also work on, fitting neatly into a bag and easy to hold on to on a bus.
There are quite a few different things going on in this piece, and several examples of ways to create flowers. The daisy print fabric is really lovely and very muted so I have treated it in the same way, working anticlockwise with little straight stitches across the centre of the daisy into each petal with a single strand of white embroidery thread. The overlapping stitches create almost a twist in the centre of each flower and I gone over that with a two strand two twist french knot in the middle of the large flowers and a two strand single twist french knot in the smaller ones. The colours are so pale they are barely there, and add just a little bit of understated texture- totally at odds with the mad and busy combinations of reed flowers sharing the fabric layer.
I have taken some inspiration from my stitchscape pebbles with these flower combinations, and worked several different stitches over the top of each other. It started out with chunky straight stitch stems in DMC Coton Perle thread, with two colours of yellow bullion knots at the top of each one. Added to this were then more long straight stitches in a single strand of Stylecraft Special DK acrylic yarn to add a fluffy texture, and over the top of that, two strand pistil stitches in green. More colour was added with the tapering french knot stems, and white fly stitch butterflies finish it off nicely. In the same colour thread that the pistil stitches have been done in, I also tried to bed down the flowers on a surface, rather than having them levitate among the daisies, with some quick straight stitches worked horizontally underneath the vertical stems. It's a good tip if you are sewing a flowerbed that floats on empty space in your hoop, add some layered straight stitches underneath to add a sense of ground and it really brings the flowers to life.
I have also worked several detached chain stitch flowers, following the image on the print. Rather than cover the entire piece of fabric (which I have done before but can just look quite messy), I have only worked stitches on the flowers that had a printed dot in the middle. You can just about see between the detached chains some green or blue dots at the centre. I have also worked little french knots on any spot within the print that wasn't part of a flower, which works really well and kind of looks like little flower buds waiting to burst out. At the top of this layer, where a flower has fallen off the edge of my cut line, I have continued it up anyway, blending the fabric layer with the one underneath. This is a really lovely technique, although is more effective with larger flowers. The bullion knots that edge the rest of this layer are then worked in around the trailing flowers.
I really like the top two layers, very understated but quite interesting. The top piece is a polka dot fabric on which I have worked back stitch in both diagonal directions, then single strand, single twist french knots randomly at the centre of some of the squares. To edge this layer I have worked a multi-directional whipped back stitch over the same row of back stitches to create a slightly chunky cord-like appearance.
The stripe layer beneath is one of my favourite fabrics. I have followed the stripes within the pattern exactly, with the hard lines at the edge of the colour changes worked in two strand back stitch, and the dotted line of the print worked with single strand running stitch. To create a little bit more excitement, I have played with a kind of long whip stitch between the running stitches, zig-zagging down with my needle working from the outside into the channel between the stitches from either direction. The hardest part was trying to make sure I always started in the right direction so that the zig-zags would be going the same way at the same point, although random zags could be interesting as well.
I also really like what I have done with the ric-rac, something else that was the result of an experiment. Initially I just used two strands of green embroidery thread and worked one colour across the ripples in one diagonal directional, and a different shade of green working back on the other diagonal. I was going to leave it like that but decided it was a bit boring, so used a single strand of yellow thread and played with a sort of pekinese stitch, wrapping under and around the points where the two green colours met. This then created an additional straight line through the middle of the ric-rac, as well as little bobbles of colour on the points- a good experimental result!
Because there was no real inspiration for this piece, it didn't have a name but my lovely followers have come through with some inspiration of their own, so thank you to everyone who put forward a suggestion of what this piece reminds them of. Medley Marshes isn't a real place (as far as I know), but comes from the medley of fabrics used to create a harmonious piece.... or something along those pompous artistic lines. I just like the alliteration. x
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