Free Range Stitchscape

 

Ain't nobody here but us chickens. Chick, chick, chick, chicken!! 

Just a couple of the name suggestions I had sent in for this hoop. When I'd finished it I asked on social media for some name suggestions and I got the two above along with; Chooks, Spot the Dinner Guest, Farm Fresh, Fox in the Chicken Coop and Pecking Order, which was a strong contender. The chosen name was Free Range of course because I like my chickens to have lots of wide open spaces. Or I would if I had chickens.

If I was allowed to/had space for chickens, my preference would be Silkie ones because they're just so silly, and they have blue skin which is cool. I have no idea if they are the best kind of chicken to keep though, or if there is a best kind. I have a couple of friends who rescue the poor, traumatised, naked chickens from battery egg farm operations and eventually rehabilitate them into looking and acting like real chickens which is a fantastic thing to do. 

These chickens (my fictional ones), luckily have never heard of battery farms and have always been happily mooching around in their wide open space with their friends. Even the fox doesn't look particularly threatening sneaking around the edge of the flock. He probably wouldn't want to get on Mildred's bad side to be fair, she's of a military nature and can be quite loud and strident, barking orders when required and snapping her beady eyes to attention if something should look out of order. She's a softie really, just a bit bossy, but the fox doesn't need to know that. 

The chicken print fabric I'm afraid is several seasons old now so I'm not sure if you'd be able to find much more. It's a Makower design called Village Life, Chickens (in Cream) and I purchased it several years ago from The Stitching Post as a FQ (fat quarter), and immediately made it up into this hoop but then it got left for another few years just as an example of fabric layering - along with the Piggington hoop I finished last year. 

It's nice because of the small scale, and the fact that the chickens are all the right way up! For quilting fabrics you can get the non-directional designs so chickens would be facing in every direction with no ground surface, or directional like this one is where everyone is standing the same way. Each has their own place, but this type is much easier to work with in a landscape setting for obvious reasons.

I haven't really done anything to the design, just literally coloured around the edges of the chickens with a single strand back stitch, trying to match my colours to the chickens themselves. The chicks I have done slightly differently because they are such a simple shape, and I've worked whipped back stitch around them just to differentiate because the back stitches then looked too big on their small frames so I've blurred those joins. 

The wattles and combs have been textured with one twist french knots, which I've done before on chicken pieces (with a different chicken design though) and think looks really sweet. The thread I used is a whole variegated coton perle thread so some are lighter or darker to mix things up.

The coops again have just been embellished with long straight stitches, varying whether I used one or two strands in the needle to create different weights  of line. I've bedded these in to the ground by actually adding more of a textured hint of a ground surface using a single strand in a matching colour and working rough straight stitches to draw in a scrappy ground. Tiny one strand, one twist french knots have been worked under any hen or rooster than looks like they'd be bending down to eat something, and I've used more variegated thread in greens to make long fly stitch scrub grasses at the bottom of the coop legs and in any big gaps that stood out. The thread I topped and tailed too, so it's two strands but rather than use two strands in the same direction, I've swapped the ends so if the variegation was light at one end and dark at the other, I have both at either end which creates some interesting contrast.

Moving back up to the top of the hoop - these are much simpler layers in terms of colour (they still have an awful lot of stitching on them!) so that it lets the chickens bustling about and their business really stand out. The top layer has been backstitched in a single strand of thread, with two stitches per zig or zag line following the pattern. The top of the fabric layer has been covered with bullion knots, and my little trade mark crosses added to the calico right at the top there. 

Coming down, I have worked fly stitches over each of the arrow shapes in the pattern. This fabric just screams out for fly stitch to go over the lines, I'm not sure what else you'd use it for really it's just so perfect as a template for that stitch to follow. 

Because this poor hoop has been hanging around for a while, although I'd tacked it, the top of this fabric layer had still managed to move which I didn't realise until later so I've had to work quite a thick row of french knots across the top of this fabric to fill in the calico gap. I wonder if you can tell where the gap would have been? (Hint, it's in the below photo.)

The third fabric down is also an ideal fabric chosen because it looks like a stitch. In this case it's seed stitch! There are drawn clusters of what looks like seed stitch, perhaps giving them more of a direction rather than it being so all directional like you would normally do but still. I haven't filled in the whole layer otherwise I would be there for months just on that one bit - you can kind of see where I've left sections and let the print do the work for me. 

Initially I just left the layer like that, just the tonal seed stitches but it really didn't work and I decided that it was missing just a pop of colour so I've used the same thread I used for the wattles on the chickens - the variegated coton perle thread, and worked french knots across the top in random clusters. It honestly totally revamped this top half and matched it so well, drawing your eye down and through to the chickens. I like that some of the french knot poppies are darker as well, like clouds are passing over the field. 

Again, this fabric (above) can only be interpreted for me into fly stitches. It works really nicely with the other fly stitch fabric because I've used it going in a different direction so it isn't too samey. These are slightly thinner as well with only one strand used rather than the two used previously. The circles that you can see above are also in the fabric print and I've covered those with satin stitch.

Once I had finished the hoop I did go back in and add the single strand sage green fly stitch stems and little french knot taper flowers to match the big ones at the bottom we'll come to in a second. As with the red poppies it was a balancing thing, moving the colours and textures up and down to bounce echoes around the whole hoop. 

Because I wanted the chickens to be the dominant fabric layer in this hoop, but not the bottom layer, I had to put another fabric underneath them to be my base fabric. I talk in my workshops and talks about how the initial layering of your fabric pieces can really influence which areas stand out more so it isn't usual for me to suddenly layer the bottom piece underneath, usually it's my key fabric so it will be on the top. I wanted to add something chunky to this layer to help to disguise that it was underneath, and made the chickens look like they were falling off a cliff edge, so I decided to go for chunky french knot tapers. 

These are just vertical rows of french knots but the bottom one in the line will be five twists, then four twists, then three....etc so that they get narrower toward the top like a Foxglove or Lupin would do. The heaviness of them, and also the thickness, works really nicely with the flat elements everywhere else. This is quite a dainty piece really without much three dimension so these tapers do stand out somewhat, especially when I added on the lovely green beads, and extra french knots in a matching sandy colour. 

The fabric pattern had already been embellished with stem stitch following the more obvious lines - which look a bit like straw pieces to me - so there is texture there, and some french knots (because you can never have too many, obviously) scattered along those lines. Plus there's the small ric rac which was just the perfect trimming for that edge, not too showy but still interesting. 

The big stitches at the bottom have balanced and weighted it all nicely, pushing back in the perspective and turning my cliff face into ground once more. The chickens will be pleased!

So, the stitch run down for my Free Range Stitchscape is; straight stitch, bullion knots, back stitch, french knots, fly stitch, seed stitch, couching, stem stitch, whipped back stitch and beading.

These are fairly big pieces, made in 25cm hoops, and I have ordered some lovely frames for them from Barton Studios which should be arriving soon hopefully. I think Free Range and Piggington sit quite happily alongside each other. All of my animals seem fairly content and that can only be a good thing. I may be involved in another exhibition of textile works next year so I'd like these two in there I think. We shall see!

P.S: Spot the cat whiskers! Just before he tried to step on the tray and it all came crashing down.