The two projects in this page were undertaken as a class exercise. The teacher was Rosemary Culshaw of Horsell, Woking, England, and the class theme was 'The View Beyond'. There are two pieces, a picture of Atlantis as seen from Mir, and a fishing harbour. Both files are rather large, so that you can click the little thumbnail and download the big file if you want to see the detail of the stitching, which has been scanned from the original not from a photograph. They have not yet been mounted, so I will try to scan them again and update after they are mounted.
As the rest of the class were all studying garden magazines, I felt desperate to find something different, when a wonderful picture appeared on the back page of a newspaper of the shuttle Atlantis photographed from Mir with the earth in the background. I concluded that this was the project I wanted to work.
The first bit was easy. I had bought a piece of blue evenweave to do some of Jennifer Aikman-Smith's cats and decided to use some of that. The blue is not quite the right colour but it could be modified with paint. I scanned in the picture and printed it out, so that I could cut out the shape of the shuttle herself and make a template. Then the shuttle was embroidered with brick stitch and cross stitch using one strand of silk for the 'white' bits and two of Anchor stranded cotton for the greys and black. Incidentally, I did use a frame.
The project then got more difficult. I decided that the solar panels for the space station should be done in leather, but had difficulty in sticking the leather down. The leather is nice soft glove leather. It was eventually stuck down with Wonderweb, a product for sticking down hems with an iron. It seemed to work OK as far as I can tell. The leather was embroidered with the lines on the panels, using a chenille needle. I found it necessary to stitch guide lines on the leather so that I could see where I was going. I did not rip out the wibbly lines because it was a learning piece and because it would have left the leather looking like a nice soft colander. The class is doing applique this term but I was let off on the grounds that I did applique last term!
The sky was implied with watercolour crayons, placed with varying degrees of thickness, and wetted and ironed to set the colours. This worked reasonably well, but another time I would colour the cloth first! This piece will have not to be washed, but I never lick the cotton thread, so may get away with it.
There are some bits of ocean shown in cross stitch in a single strand of Jade Caron Watercolours. Ocean also shows up in green paint. The clouds were a problem, and various experiments are still on the ground. But the final solution was some white raw, unspun wool, teased out to make it look rather better than it scans.
The file is about 250k, so you have been warned if you decide to click on the thumbnail!
So there I was half way through the term with nothing to do! Not a happy situation to be in. The idea for the harbour scene came from a member of the class, who had been on holiday in a fishing harbour in France. I decided to go back to my first love this time - canvas, but I had wanted for some time to experiment with trying to do a piece mostly using the hand dyed Shetland wool I had bought from 20th Century Yarns, a small UK producer of wonderful yarns. The sea is stitched in cashmere stitch, one of my favourites. The nature of cashmere stitch works particularly well with hand dyed fibre like this because you get little blocks of colour, whereas with basketweave stitch you get stripes as you can see in the sky. I plan to send a copy of this picture to Judith Gussin of 20th Century Yarns because I think the colours are particularly good for the sea.
The piers are also done in 20C Yarns fibre, using diagonal mosaic stitch and tent stitch, and the far distance is in basketweave stitch, as you will see from the directions of the stripes. A bit more imagination and I could have changed direction for some of the areas, such as the distant hills or the mewstone (island) but I thought of that too late. The fishing boat is done mostly in brick stitch. Initially I did it in blue, but when the sea was finished the boat disappeared so I ended up with a rather horrid orange which works quite well. The mooring rings are couched down and the mooring ropes stick out satisfactorily to give the impression of a closer view. The lamp of the lighthouse is done with DMC gold which I think looks rather vulgar but people seem to like.
This file is about 217k if you decide to download it.
To discuss the contents of this article, or for advice or information about needlepoint, write to me by clicking here.
Copyright © 1996 Robert Tusler
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