Isle of Wight Shells Stitchscape

I finished this piece ages ago and have been really remiss in actually posting about it. My blog posting these days comes in a flurry where I collect all of the photos that have been accumulating on my camera and phone, add them all to various blogs posts and try and write lots of them at once so that I can just post every so often but, when I run out of the pre-made ones, then I forget all about continuing to add the new sets that are building up. It's a bit like a pressure cooker - too much pressure and I mass blog, then it all dies down again. 

Anyway, I have posted about this one already a couple of times so this is just the finished look. If you want to see how it was created from the very start then click here to see what it first looked like and here to see how I made the little sticky-outy anemone things. 

The bottom half is a pleasing mass of texture. As well as the stitched real shells (collected from the Isle of Wight funnily enough), it has Stylecraft Moonbeam yarn in a light beige colour stitched into big loops and also stretched over shells for a flatter texture. The Moonbeam yarn alternates between matte and shiny and I've used both of these sections to create different effects. Around that there are drizzle stitches in green, loopy french knots (deliberately un-tensioned when stitched to give big bunny ears), bullion knot barnacles, neat french knots, the suede anemones and several different colours and sizes of bead. I haven't stitched on the fabric to create a texture on it, just secured the top with loosely couched raffia, and the bottom with some pale blue crosses to hold it. 

The top half, by comparison, is quite restrained! With the cloud fabric I have gone around each cloud with a single strand of back stitch in white, adding in slight fluffiness and detail with french knots. The blue areas are filled with single strand seed stitch and I've added some fly stitch birds over the top in a dark grey because they always look good in seascape pieces. The top edge has been covered with bullion knots and my cross stitch kisses, and the bottom edge has couched acrylic yarn which I battered and pulled at a bit first to give it a more puffy look. 

The fabric underneath was set behind the cloud fabric and brighter blue underneath as I wanted it to be as if the horizon were disappearing away so I haven't made much of this and have just kind of ignored it. More Moonbeam yarn in a dusky blue has been couched over the raw edge of the brighter blue in a sort of mirror of the couching above and to give those sections height, again trying to push back that horizon line. 

The two blue 'sea' fabrics have been basically treated in the same way, ignoring any pattern completely. Running stitch in a thicker, two strand, thread that sort of matches the fabric colouring and then a frosty blue metallic single strand whip stitch along each row. Whip stitch over running stitch is great for water because the broken line accentuates the wave pattern and gives it a lot of movement. 

For the lower sea fabric I have edged this with a full six stranded floss piece just to keep it neat without adding too much extra detail. 

The rocks have been edged and partially filled in with french knots, with the gaps between them covered in little stitches over each spot in the fabric. It looks almost like a seed stitch because they are in different directions and fairly regular but the intention was to just add a little stitched 'dollop' on top of all of the printed spots. 

So from humble beginnings as an example piece on layering and attaching shells, it's now a fully fledged Stitchscape! The total stitch list is; bullion knots, straight stitch, seed stitch, fly stitch, french knots, back stitch, couching, running stitch, whip stitch, drizzle stitch and beading. 

It looks good out in the sunshine too, right at home among the rays.