Morning Aspen

Morning Aspen

This is the second in the series of nuno felted landscapes that I am working on. It is the only one that is a horizontal presentation. All the others are vertical.

Here is how it started after felting and before stitching. I wanted to add some aspen trees in the background and red twig dogwood bushes in the foreground. I did several sketches of other ideas but decided that I like this idea best. I originally planned on stitching the trees with white, grey and black threads. But then I decided I would do something more in the style of Wolf Kahn. His trees are always really colorful so I thought I would give it a try.

I started with what I thought was a fairly dark pink thread. As you can see, these trees just sank right into the background and were nearly the same value. So I needed much darker darks and paler lights. Back to the thread box. I should have had a small sample in the same colors to try out my threads but I didn’t have that available. So I just kept going.

Here are the trees after I added more darks and more highlights. You can click on the photo to see a bit closer. I did add some more highlights to the trees on the left hand side. The trees are stitched with a variety of dark purples, reds, pinks and lavenders.

I then added the red twig dogwood bushes. These are stitched with a dark wine red, medium red and then a variegated thread that is red, orange and purple.

And here is the completed piece. The uncropped version on the left and the cropped version on the right. I might crop even a little bit more off the bottom. It’s a very colorful piece and I do like how the colorful trees look like the morning sun is shining on them.

20 thoughts on “Morning Aspen

  1. Beautiful stitching. I’m just starting to get into free motion stitching/embroidery. We had a class yesterday with the amazing Jan Tillet as part of our course at Bicton College. So many possibilities, so little time. Always the way it seems. Thanks for showing us your lovely work Ruth.

    1. Thanks Carol! I love adding free motion stitching to felt, such fun. And I agree, never enough time but I just squeeze in those free moments to get in my daily dose of creativity.

  2. Lovely Ruth, I particularly like the dogwood. You can’t beat a bit of free motion stitching.

    1. Thanks Tracey! One of the things I love about the winter/early spring woods is the red twig dogwoods giving us some color 🙂

  3. I love the colors, Ruth. A bit out of your normal palette !
    What about just lightly cropping the bottom & sides. There’s something about the right side moving upwards that makes me think of morning.

    1. Thanks Elizabeth! It is definitely not my normal palette but always trying to stretch myself a bit. Yes, I will have to see what is the most effective crop. Thanks for your input 🙂

  4. Beautiful. And I can now see trees again albeit they are on the ceiling – I’m not allowed to move from horizontal at the moment!
    A very timely posting of your colourful piece.
    Thank you

    1. Thanks Antje! I’m sorry to hear you are bed bound or couch bound maybe. Hope you are up and about soon 🙂

  5. Such a beautiful finished piece. Thanks for sharing your process. It’s nice to see he different stages and additions. I love the dogwood, too.

    1. Thanks Marilyn! It was amazing how the thread I thought would show up well just didn’t. So had to keep adding more colors!

  6. Oh, wow, that’s gorgeous, Ruth! I always think your felt landscapes look great before and can’t see how they’d be improved, but the stitching is amazing. I think I prefer this one with the natural edges. Or maybe it’s just because the photo is cropped close to the edges.

    1. Thanks Zed, I was happy with the pink and purple trees amazingly. The natural edges do make it feel more lively.

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