Stitchscape Coos

I don't think I ever shared this piece on here (a terrible oversight - apologies) although you may have caught a glimpse of it on Facebook or Instagram. I have so many social media platforms to keep up with now I'm afraid my blog takes a back seat half of the time and The Mother has to remind me to update you all on here! It's worth keeping up a blog though because I use it all the time as a diary of when I did things a couple of years ago and it often has more information on techniques I used in specific pieces that I can revisit - I guess in a way it's more for me than any of you readers!

These cows started out as an example of how to put together colours and colour balancing for one of my classes - as a lot of my stitchscapes do at the moment, I think I mentioned it in my last post about the lightning stitchscape - but eventually they all get the embroidery treatment to keep my examples fresh. To be honest I wasn't sure about the cow pattern, they aren't as cute as the sheep which are everyone's favourites and not as quirky as the chickens but I thought I would give them a go. In my list of ideas of future stitchscapes I have got a farmyard type design floating around in my brain where I could use all three of these fabrics but I don't know that it would work with the scale of the patterns.

The layers on this piece have been treated very truely (if that's a word) to the patterns underneath. The white mottled fabric at the top has faint lines running through it imitating slubs, which I have gone over with a neutral single strand of long straight stitches, crossing over and under in a random pattern to keep the long stitches down and flat.
The grey fabric underneath which reminded me a little of a fence has been filled in with satin stitches where the shapes are and in the colours of the shapes, keeping the integrity of the design. This has been simply topped with a couched embroidery thread (using all 6 strands).
The green leaf layer has been drawn over with a single strand of split stitch in the veins of the leaves, and the centres and outlines of the leaves treated with a thicker back stitch.

I haven't even amended the cows at all really, simply followed the outline with a single strand of back stitch and filled in the patches on their coats with a rough satin stitch. I have added single strand pistil stitches and a few yellow french knot to this layer to make it slightly greener and more 'field-like' as it seemed a bit strange for my cows to just be standing in a greyish mud.
I found in my stash a neutral leatherette cord which has been couched over the top and to stop the top of the fabric layer from fraying before the pistil stitches went down I just added a single strand of running stitch to stop that moving and keep the edge clean.

Most of the work went into the bottom layer which was initially treated with two stranded seed stitch using two slightly different colours which you can see better in person actually (these photos were snapped on my phone a while ago so they aren't fantastic I'm afraid).
Over this went straight stitch stems, then two stranded detached chain stitch flowers with yellow french knot centres, and french knot tapers in a slightly more mustard-yellow.
The top of this layer, which you can just about see through the hedgerow that's been created, is a braid I made myself using several full strands of embroidery thread; a fantastic technique if you can't find a ribbon or trimming that works with your piece.

So, the overall stitch run down for this piece is; straight stitch, back stitch, running stitch, stem stitch, detached chain stitch, satin stitch, pistil stitch, french knots, bullion knots, couching and seed stitch.

I've also left this one framed in the hoop as I'm toying with the idea of framing it again within a square frame as I've experimented with on my #inthehoop series where some are framed in hoops in frames. This is a 15cm/6" sized hoop though so it is slightly bigger and will need a 30cm square frame.