Sailing Away

Ok, so as it is after Christmas I have obviously finished my brother's present:

I am really pleased with how it turned out, especially the sense of distance in the water in spite of each block being a single shade. I will have to come up with another design that uses this technique to keep for myself but possibly involving colour of some kind. I have also washed all the projects I've been working on recently ready for framing, this project wasn't too bad because it took so little time to complete but the others were longer so there were some marks from repeated handling.

Three very different pieces. I will put up images of them framed as soon as I am able to.

Mountains

Having moved onto the mountains I faced the issue of what patterns to use. I needed them to be large, bold, and easy to identify, therefore they all had to be very different and lacking common shapes which could make them appear similar from a distance. I started with the large lace pattern on the closest mountain as that is very striking and I thought that if I used it anywhere else it would draw the eye to the wrong part of the image. The top edge where it meets the snow line is particularly satisfying:

It is very convincing as white snow coming down over the top of the mountain and I think it looks rather more complicated than it actually is. Obviously, as the front mountain this one had to be the darkest so the choice of patterns to use elsewhere had to be based on that. I chose ones I had not tried before for the other one strand mountain and the middle machine mountain and a variation of the first pattern I ever tried on the other. Expanding my stitch vocabulary is always a good idea and I thought that these four made a very varied group:

No one will mistake any of them for one of the others at any distance! I have also filled in the flag with silver thread to add a bit of variety but keep it nice and masculine. However I have decided to leave the sail empty. This is for two reasons; firstly boat sails are often white so it looks more realistic, but more importantly because it really stands out against the patterns of the mountains behind it and I like the idea of the focal point of a piece of embroidery being an area without any actual embroidery. It appeals to my sense of whimsy.

There is only the sea to go now then I will be finished. This simple, flat, stylised, with-no-shading thing is much quicker and easier than what I was doing before but I am very pleased with how it is coming out anyway.

Figure and Boat

Having finished sewing the pattern in the boat with two strands I started on the figure in the boat, also in two strands, but hit a problem. Looking at the image from a distance the two sections are the same shade and therefore are not distinguishable. It looks like they are simply two parts of the same object. The figure needs to be a noticeably different shade in order to be obviously separate - in the boat not part of it.

Adding extra stitches is the obvious answer but doing so with two strands would leave the pattern so heavy that it could not be distinguished because it is already quite compact. Therefore I cheated a bit and added an extra stitch to the pattern in machine thread so the overall impression is slightly darker but not too much:

The difference is minor but just enough to make the figure noticeably separate from the boat. The next section to move on to will be the mountains.

Next project

For my next project I thought I would go for something much more stylised to show a different side to blackwork. As Christmas is coming up I decided to make something for my brother. Usually I can't make things for him because embroidery is not something a man is going to hang on his wall, but the monochromatic and stylised appearance of blackwork makes it more masculine so I think it will be suitable. He rows so I was thinking I'd do an image of that but it proved to be a bit complicated sorting out all the oars, instead I have settled on a sailing boat with mountains in the background. This is the design sketch:

Each section will be a flat, unshaded single pattern but the thread will be thinner further back to give a sense of perspective. The only area where a pattern will appear in different thicknesses is on the water and that will still not be shaded as there will be gaps between the different waves. Here is the outline:

I made the outline stitch change thickness to aid in the illusion of perspective though the intent for the water is that the thickness of the stem stitch and the thickness of the stitch pattern will not always coincide. To create the exterior circle I drew around a bowl in pencil on the wrong side and then followed the line with running stitch so it would show through on the front without any danger of the finished piece having pencil on it. I have a good feeling about this design.