I've tried thinking up a cool name for this Stitchscape but, I'm blaming being stuck in one room for a week for lack of inspiration (C-virus, darn you!), there are no good names coming to mind. I'm happy to change the title of this piece if anyone else has a good suggestion though! Maybe read through to the end of this post to see what this Stitchscape is all about and where it came from and then let me know in the comments. If not, Dappled Sunflower Fields will have to do!
The space dyed fabric was cut randomly, I haven't fussy cut it, but the section that I snipped off really reminded me of a shaft of sunshine cutting through a field so I decided to use that as my inspiration and really play on that idea with flowers and foliage on top. The centre of the fabric was much yellowy-er (is that a word?) so my woven wheel Sunflowers there are a paler yellow, almost cream, right in the middle, getting darker as they work outward towards the edge of the hoop to a dark gold. To make them gel together they have all got the same colour and number of beads in the centre (which close up now makes them look like nests with bird eggs in), and I think actually the effect of sunshine lighting up the centre works a bit better from slightly further away.
I've also tried to continue the slight light and dark idea with the straight stitch stems worked around the flowers to help give them some context and to go over the edge of the fabric layer. There are several different shades of green in these stems as I was using up random leftovers that were clogging up my thread tin although I don't actually know how many I've used as this piece also took me quite a long time to get around to finishing - similarly to the Fiery Haze Stitchscape, this one was being lugged around in a bag on the bus for a while!
It didn't look quite right with just straight stems though so I added in green french knot tapers for some additional leafy texture, and enhanced the ground a bit with little irregular straight stitches as the top level of stems looked like they were floating without anything to stand on but bare fabric. You do need to have an element of the horizontal for a ground layer to stand your stems on!
More french knots were added in yellow around the flowers to help them look a little less 'plonked down' so hopefully those look like fallen petals or maybe new buds, or perhaps Buttercups? Do they flower at the same time as Sunflowers? I don't think they do so maybe allow me some artistic license here, or make of them what you will.
The pin head fabric at the top actually took a while to achieve. The print itself is the little 'T' shapes formed out of tiny dots along the top and a solid line for the trunk so I've replicated this with one strand, one twist french knots along the top edge. They are so tiny! You can feel them more than you can see that they are knots almost. Bullion knots have been used to edge the fabric, with some little kisses on the calico backing fabric above.
I've worked stem stitch on the layer below to give those vertical lines where the pattern has slight changes in it, and added some little french knots to look like bushes or trees, with more french knots to edge the top of the layer and keep things neat and tidy.
The dark green layer on the left has got a combination of stitches happening. There's whipped back stitch on the solid olive green lines, with back stitch on the more fiddly squiggled lines that look like tiny islands, and then the dark section has just been textured with some rows of running stitch. Bullion knots in olive green have been used to edge this layer.
The layer that took the longest, and a lot of patience, has to be this slightly spotty layer. I'm sure I do this technique over and over again, and then say I'm not doing it any more but when there's a fabric that has small little splodges on it, I just want to fill them all in with rough satin stitches because the texture at the end is so nice - but it takes so long!! There are so many lovely colours happening here though, it was another great place to be using up all of those oddments of thread in my tin and I think I can count four or five used here which works really well with all of the tones in the background of the fabric. There's sunshine and shadow, light and dark in this one fabric strip alone! I've used all of these colours, or most of them, to make up a couched thread edging - the quickest part of the whole layer to finish.
Do you like my fancy ric-rac trimming? It's an amazingly textured trim and has bulky weaves in it with a metallic thread shot through - the colours match perfectly so I had to use it to help combine all of these greens. The metallic in the trim also matches the metallic in the beads (which is pure chance, not something I've deliberately thought about).
Keeping things simple (for once) for the spot layer underneath, I have alternated filling in some of the shapes with satin stitch to give them a padded look and just going around others with back stitch. I've also varied the direction of the satin stitches so that the light picks up on the thread differently. There isn't much of a sheen to the stranded cotton itself (which is either Anchor or DMC stranded) but it's just enough to make a difference I think.
The stitch run down for this piece is as follows; french knots, bullion knots, straight stitch, stem stitch, back stitch, whip stitch, running stitch, couching, satin stitch, woven wheel stitch and beading.
So there we have it! This poor neglected Stitchscape has waited a long time for its reveal and doesn't even have a name I'm particularly happy with! It was eventually finished in December 2021 after being used for workshop purposes and carried around the country in a bag, then the hoop had Ribena spilled on it (which washed off, thankfully!) and then it was popped in my box of other hoops and forgotten about - I didn't even photograph it properly!! But, we're now all caught up and friends again so that's good.
No comments:
Post a Comment