Piggington Stitchscape

 

Huzzah! Piggington is complete! I can't find the original post about setting this hoop up - but it was several years ago now. The pig fabric was purchased from Kelly at The Stitching Post during her open day when she first set up her beautiful converted stables now creative studio and fabric shop, and I believe it's a Makower print from a Village Life collection. At the time it was a fat quarter in an end-of-line section so I don't know if there's any left anywhere, certainly there isn't enough for me to make a kit from I'm afraid. 

The pigs are so sweet though and I love the mix of Old Spot, Saddleback and Whites (or maybe a Tamworth?). I also hope you are impressed by my pig knowledge! It has been cultivated through years of attending country shows....although I did Google to check that my original theories were correct. 

Each pig has been drawn around again with a single strand of back stitch. Where there are darker lines I have just tried to match the lines of colour in the print already so I haven't made them deliberately darker. The spots on the spotted pigs have been covered in satin stitch, and I've added some areas of texture to any gaps with single strands of straight stitch, either following the line of a shadow or filling in a section on the saddlebacks, just to make them slightly hairy and more interesting looking. The eyes are single strand, one twist french knots. 

The water and food troughs are part of the print and I've gone around the edges with single strand straight stitches to give them some texture. For the water though I've used metallic thread in blue to give it just a little bit of sparkle, stitching long lines straight across the trough and then couching them in a little at the middle to make sure it doesn't spill over. 

Texture has been given to the ground with scrappy single strand straight stitches following lines of the print, and I've used some Stylecraft DK acrylic yarn (stripped down) to make the tall grasses, going over them again with some other long stitches to give other colours, trying to blend in greens and beiges to colour balance the piece. French knots using a variegated yarn have been added in as well to try and give an idea of mud piles around each pig where they might be rooting through the ground. 

I'm not 100% happy with the top of the pig layer where the trimming is, and I think it is pretty much down to my fussy cutting around the top pig you see in the above image, and then moving the trim over the edge to hold it down. It looks odd to have a fence go over the pig and, in hindsight, what I should have done would be to cut the fabric closer to the pig and make it look more as if the fence is behind rather than sitting on top of - it has upset the sense of perspective there. 

I have no issue with my hessian looped fence though, it's a really gorgeous fancy trimming and I've blended this in with some scattered french knots and more straight stitch grasses. 

The pig sties are all different and have actually been glued on with bondaweb, something I rarely do as it makes it so difficult to stitch through the layers. The middles have all been seed stitched just to give some texture and then the brick walls have been made by back stitching around the bricks on the largest pigsty, using a single strand of black and brown in the same needle for some variation; for the second pigsty it is again back stitch but using a single strand of a matching colour, and the third pigsty is long straight stitches woven together (so the long vertical stitches were made first, then horizontal stitches woven through as they were being made). All of the inner edges have been whip stitched, then the outer edges are couched with embroidery thread to give a neat finish, with a darker discreet single strand back stitch just tucking underneath to add shadow and definition. 

They popped out slightly too much though so I've also added feather stitch vines growing over the top to blend them in and make them look a little bit aged. 

Working upwards from the pigs, one of my favourite bits is definitely this field of gold. It took for---ever to do and was totally worth it in my opinion. The pattern of the french knots is the same as the pattern printed on the fabric, lots of wavy lines of spots in varying sizes. I've used a variegated thread to get the different colours and create some movement, and worked different sizes of knot (more or less twists around the needle) depending on the size of the line I was covering. The tiny knots have been made with two strands and one twist, and the biggest knots are two strands, four twist. 

I've edged this layer with several lengths of a lovely hand dyed yarn from Lamington Lass Yarns I picked up a while ago, which has the exact shades of mustard, ochre, khaki and brown that I was looking for. The beautiful variegation has worked well with my folding lengths together and it has given a nice puffiness to the top of the layer. 

Above this was a lovely striped batik and I've not done much to this at all, simply following the spikey lines with two stranded straight stitch. The thread looks variegated here but actually it's a blue that was light damaged so I got it much cheaper - the light has bleached away some of the blue to give a dirty parchment colour that matched really nicely, and I've edged the layer with cream bullion knots. 

One of my other favourite layers is the green seed stitch strip. The fabric has a quiet mottled texture printed on it but I've enhanced this by using two different colours of green to make my seed stitch, working them in distinctive patches. The little creamy french knot daisies were added later in an attempt to colour balance the piece out as it was light and creamy on the bottom but mostly green on the top and it didn't work. 

I often don't work chronologically through a piece and go back to add more on each layer as the scene builds up. In this case adding more green to the bottom with the acrylic yarn, more white to the top with french knot flowers and more gold/ochre with fly stitch stems further up. It has definitely helped!

I've used the acrylic yarn again to edge this layer, using a technique which a student of mine came up with many years ago when trying to recreate a vineyard. Because the DK yarn has four strands to it, if you just carefully pull on one, the rest of the strands bunch up and make a wonderful texture. I've used it before with my Water Lily Lagoon Stitchscape and thought it would work really well again here. 

The second problem I have with this piece though is that it is very linear and has strong horizontal lines at the top without much to break it up so this is almost a dividing line between the top and bottom and I'm not sure it has worked as well as I'd hoped. I like the texture, but perhaps it's too bold too far up the hoop?

I've used another Makower fabric above this with the lovely spots, picking out some of the pattern and working two strand, two twist french knots. I've again used two colours here to try and make it look more natural and break up the layer a little bit. As I mentioned earlier, I also needed to bring up more of that strong gold colour so I've used the same variegated yarn and made a row of single strand fly stitches, then gone back over with another length in two strands to build up the colour. The top edge has been neatened with bullion knots. 

Finally, the top blue layer has just been given a quick going over with single strand running stitch rows. I did at one point at in some fly stitch birds but there is just so much going on with this piece, it didn't add anything to it so they came out again. (More isn't always good!)

I feel like there were lessons learned here which is good. It's a nice piece as it is, and I won't make it again as it took so long and I try not to repeat exactly anyway, but next time the pigs crop up I'll try and remember what worked and what didn't!

The stitch round up for this piece is; straight stitch, running stitch, back stitch, french knots, couching, seed stitch, feather stitch, fly stitch, whip stitch, bullion knots and satin stitch.

Interestingly, you can see the same image on the back as you do on the front!