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close up of stitched berried and stems
I finished my stitching.

I finished my stitching.

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I have finally finished my stitching. I think it is definitely slow stitching. last time I had done a practice branch to see how it would go. /2023/01/13/stitching-some-trees/ 

I wanted to add some snow but felting onto the cotton wasn’t good. and yarn didn’t look right. So I thought, why not make it on some felt and then you can needle on some snow. The branch worked out really well. I do love stitching on felt.

 

Then I tried to add snow. Nope, it looked terrible. Sorry, no picture and no snow. I was a bit discouraged and was going to give it up as a bad job and then I thought I’d come this far, I should finish the piece.

 

And here is the finished piece. I used an app that takes out the real background and then you can add a nicer background.

stitched canvas. 3 snowflakes, 3 evergreen trees, as spruce branch with red berries.

All in all not a bad project with no real purpose other than to slow stitch. I had thought I was doing part of the first quarter challenge but on re-reading it I see I should do the same tree in each season and using an evergreen seems a bit like cheating. I have another idea. I saw a picture of making a tree that looked like it would work well so I am planning to give it a try. so hopefully soon I can show you.

And one last thing as it is valentines day in a couple of days I made a heart.

needle felted heart on a grey felt background

 

A little slow stitching

A little slow stitching

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I like slow stitching. Just stitching for fun and to relax. No big purpose or major projects. Just do it as you feel like it. This suits me as I am not a great stitcher and I can pick it up and put it down without any guilt. I belong to a group on Facebook and some people are amazing artists and some just do random stitching on a piece of cloth and everything in between.

I decided I wanted t make some snowflakes and at least one tree. I had seen an interesting one in my Pinterest suggestions. To this end, I took the ripped-up sheet out of the donations box. You know what they say if you want to know what you intended for something just give it away and next week you will know what you needed it for. I was lucky that we are very slow with these things and they hadn’t made it to their destination. I am still not sure what the original idea was for these wide strips of sheet.

One piece was a little grubby looking so I chose it for the proof of concept (practice) piece. I have a nice small free-standing embroidery hoop I got at a garage sale (I think). It means it’s hands-free and can sit beside my chair and the hoop doesn’t go missing.

 

Snowflakes. I drew 3 stars onto the cloth to use as patterns. I used some thick gold polyester thread from Gutermann.

PATERN FOR SNOWFLAKES gold thread spokes for stitching snowflakes Finished gold stitched snowflake

That was easy enough so I moved on to some clean fabric

I drew the stars a little bigger and I did gold again

Patterns for snowflakes gold snowflake partially donegold snowflake finished

Then I moved on to what would be the problem thread. It is something I picked up because it was shiny but it has no markings it is just on a plane cardboard tube.  It’s a copper/bronze kind of colour and it is terrible to work with. it seems to be a wrapped thread and it kept breaking. There are a lot more knots in the back of this one. and there was a lot more cursing with the rethreading of the needle. I would have liked to add more to this but I was done with the thread.

bronze stitched snow flake

 

Next was some nice silvery embroidery thread. DMC rayon S712. I used 3 strands. It was very nice to use.

silver stitched snowflake

 

And here they are together

3 stitched snow flakes together

I switched back to the practice cloth to work on the tree. this is the trunk( obviously) I tried to do varying lengths of stitches to help it look more like bark. It is very hard to deliberately make random stitch lengths.

brown stitched tree trunk brown stitched treetrunk close up

 

This is what the back looks like where the backstitching is. I think I like it better for bark. The problem is I am having a hard time wrapping my head around doing backstitch upside down. It probably has another name with you do it that way.

back side of stitched tree trunk backside of stitched tree trunk, close up

Next is the evergreen bows. I will see how that goes. As I said it’s slow stitching.

Autumn Nuno Slow Stitch Update

Autumn Nuno Slow Stitch Update

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I haven’t updated you recently on my slow stitching project. I hate to admit it but after my last post in January, I got out of the habit of daily stitching. It’s amazing how easy it is to stop doing something and then find it hard to get back into the habit again. But I did start stitching again towards the end of March and I have made a little progress.

Here’s the entire piece now. I have added some darker values in the foreground trees, added a few leaves down in the trunk areas and stitched some of the “shrubbery” to the left of the trees. I also added some darker values in the middle ground area to give it more depth.

Here’s a closer look at the area to the left of the trees. I am planning on continuing the stitching in the foreground areas to give the look of bushes and undergrowth. So the slow stitching will continue. I could probably forgo the stitching in the foreground but I like the look of the dense stitching and want to cover the entire surface. It’s not about the time spent on this one but the journey.

I thought it would be interesting to compare a very early photo on the left to the way it looks now on the right. A bit different?

 

Still Slow Stitching in the New Year

Still Slow Stitching in the New Year

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The last time I updated you back in early November about my slow stitching project, this is what it looked like. I had started adding some leaves to the foreground trees.

I have been continuing my slow stitching over the holidays and it has been nice to sit down for 15-20 minutes a day and just do detached chain stitch in different shades of yellow, yellow-orange and orange. Ignoring any drama of the holidays or other issues that arose for a few minutes, calmed my mind.

Here’s how the trees are looking. I think that I will be adding a bit more orange but than I’m going to go back to the yellow shades.

Here’s what the full piece looks like now. It is definitely taking shape as a landscape. As I look at it in a thumbnail format, I can see that it still needs more dark values for shadowed areas but I like the progression. It’s interesting to me how the slow progression makes me look at it more closely and how the different colors affect each other. It’s been an interesting project and I imagine it will continue through most of this year.

What are your thoughts on a slow moving project? Do you get a Zen feeling or perhaps you are impatient and want to move on to a different project?

Slow Stitch Update

Slow Stitch Update

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It’s been over a month since I last posted about my Autumn Nuno slow stitch piece. Here is where I was at the end of September.

I kept working on the negative space between the foreground trees. I was using a grey green thread and it definitely needs more darkness in between the tree trunks but I will have to add a darker thread for that. I am still mulling over what will be on the left hand side in the foreground. It’s kind of amorphous at the moment.

Once I finished the negative space between the trees, I decided that I needed to add some of the grey green into the mid ground/background area. It also helped to “cut” the overpowering sense of red and red orange there. Next up was to add “leaves” to the foreground trees. I decided to use a different stitch to highlight them a bit more. I will be adding a great many more of the leaves in a variety of yellows and yellow oranges.

The photo on the left shows where I am as of today. The photo on the right shows the beginning of the leaves being added with detached chain stitch. I still have a long way to go on completing this piece but I am happy with the progression.

 

Slow Stitch Progress – Filling in Negative Space

Slow Stitch Progress – Filling in Negative Space

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Here’s the progress on my slow stitch project. I am still stitching away about 15-30 minutes per day on this piece.

The last time I showed you, it looked like this.

First, I added some more darker values with the deep purple thread in the mid ground area. Then because I thought that I needed a little more contrast in that area, I added some deeper red orange to look like more foliage.

Then on to working on the foreground trees. Here, I was looking at negative spaces and giving some darkness and shadow to delineate the tree trunks. I am continuing to use seed stitch and used a neutralized dark green in between the tree trunks. Since the stitches are so small, this definitely is in the slow stitch category. I am still working on the right hand side. Once that’s finished, I have more tree trunks “to pull out” on the left side.

And here’s how the entire piece looks as of now. I may need to darken up the shadows between the foreground trees and I have to decide what to do on the left hand bottom corner. The foreground trees will get some stitched leaf additions too. Plus the foreground will need work in front of the trees. I am definitely enjoying this project more since I’m not trying to force working on it for longer stretches.

 

 

Autumn Nuno Hand Stitch Update

Autumn Nuno Hand Stitch Update

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The last time I updated you on my autumn nuno landscape it looked like this. I have been slowly continuing to add more color into the middle background area with seed stitch. I added a lot of red orange as well as green and even some dark purple.

Here you can see more of the red orange additions and the purple that I used for a shadow color. I decided to use the dark purple instead of brown or black. Black is definitely too stark and I think the cool color in the middle of the red orange gives it more “pop”.

Here is the area where I added more green. You can see on the left that I haven’t finished filling in the green.

And here is the piece as it is at this point. I still need to add some more shadow shapes in the red orange swath and perhaps a bit more definition of the aspen trunks in the distance. Can you see the area that will become the foreground aspen trees? It is finally looking more landscape to me. So I will keep on with my slow stitching and update you on my progress next month.

Slow Stitch Update

Slow Stitch Update

Comments 12 comments

Sorry for the short post but I have been busy with my Level 3 Stitch class this past week. We are continuing online and even though I don’t have to travel, it seems to take more time this way. But at least we are able to move forward.

I have still been stitching for 15-20 minutes per day on my autumn nuno felted piece.

 

The last time I showed you it looked like the photo above. I continued to add more dark values in the rows of “aspen” trees and also added more dark green to the distant pine trees. Ann had commented that she didn’t see trees in this piece. Hopefully, the additions I made will make them more “tree like”.

Here it is after those additions of darker value.

And here’s a close up that shows the difference in the distant pine trees before and after adding more thinner thread in dark green. The trees on the left are finished as compared to the ones on the right.

So what do you think? Did adding the darker values help the distant tree lines?

I hope you’re staying well and spending time being creative. Thanks for stopping by!

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