My latest completed bus project has been this little 12cm/5" hoop which started life as a quick example of layering for a workshop. I get asked a lot where my inspiration comes from and the honest answer sometimes is 'I've no idea!'. These examples are often thrown together the evening before a workshop after I've packed and realised that I have no demonstration pieces of how to layer the fabrics and I'll hurriedly grab handfuls of fabrics and see which ones I'm feeling at the time. In this case a handful of greens came out with a pale blue and I suppose subliminal inspiration came through seeing misty hill tops on the way in to Lewes on my way to work and a version of it got created in the hoop.
It sounds very grand and arty to say things just happen, and I don't mean to sound pretentious, it's more of a trusting the process I suppose, combined with many years worth of putting fabrics together.
There's no pre-planning on the vast majority of my hoops and as regular readers will know, I just dive right on in and cut the fabric without any drawn lines, seeing if it works or just layering what appears as a strip.
I hopped around a bit filling in the layers for this piece - mainly because I didn't always have the right colours with me at the time - but that's the beauty of tacking the layers down because you don't have to work in an order. The top layer has a pale steely blue whipped back stitch around any obvious changes in the print, a large scale design with big paste flowers if I recall rightly, then edged actually in grey bullion knots, with running stitches to the top and bottom of the layer to make the grey blend in more.
The next layer down has long straight stitches worked vertically to fill in patches of darker pattern which I was intending to look a bit pine-forest like. A slightly lighter green shade has been used to edge the fabric in french knots, drifting these down into the layer where there were gaps to sort of continue the tree/bush idea.
I have used three colours here to create a sort of ombre from light to dark which, to me, says that there is a shaft of light working it's way through that mist and shining a ray there. What does it say to you?
The fabric is edged by an old tweed effect yarn I have lying around in a basket at home.
The bottom fabric has been edged with a gorgeous baby ric-rac, only 3mm wide, and I've stitched diagonally across it to create a zig-zag effect rather than try to stitch through it.
The batik fabric has been textured by back stitches in a single strand around every obvious shape, then dark green straight stitch stems scattered in clumps across it. I have used two strands for the majority of the stems, apart from the one clump right at the front, that is actually based off the calico backing, which I've doubled up to four strands to help make it look visibly closer.
The stems did look a little bit odd and lonely on their own so I went back and added a single strand long fly stitch to each stem in a variegated green yarn. As the colours change across the layer, again I'm trying to bring in a sense of dark and light as that sunshine is working really hard to burn through the droplets of water in the air.
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