Memory Lane Monday - Needle Painting

While studying under Debbie Mercer, one of her workshops was on needlepainting, and these two pictures are from the "meadow" series.  I apologise for the standard of the photos they were taken under glass.

The idea came from a book by Sue Newhouse called Creative Hand Embroidery.

Worked this at the workshop

 The embroidery is on painted pure silk fabric.  The painting of the sky was done with diluted water colours... or acrylic plus water colour medium....For the flowers and some of the grasses we again painted various colour onto a piece of the silk, then stiffened it with 'aquadhere'.   when the silk was dry  it was like paper and we then cut out shapes and stitched them onto the picture.  In the front/bottom of the pictures the grasses are worked in turkey stitch, and when cut allowed to flow over the matt inside the frame.

As you can see we used a variety of stitches and threads to achieve effects.  The background meadow was worked in  a single thread of silk Au Ver a Soie which is beautiful to work with.

On my needlepainting journey I also created another, which I think everyone has seen already, but I would like to  post it again here so I can have a record on this blog.

This needlepainting was one I did while studying under the lovely Ada in Maryborough who I have mentioned before.   We were given the opportunity to choose a picture from her collection kept from old magazines.  Being a "newbie" in the group at the time I stood back, and the picture left was what I used for this embroidery.

West Australian Wattle

These are some close ups of the wattle bloom and the grasses.  All the embroidery was worked in wool thread on linen fabric. I have used quite a few different shades of lemon and gold for the wattle, but where the blooms are in shadow I have used lavender shades. The trunk and branches are in shades of black and dark greys, with touches of lighter greys, and is worked as a raised stem stich.  The outer branches and twigs are worked in couched single threads.

I stopped counting the knots at 2000

I hope everyone who visits, enjoyed this week's little journey down Memory Lane Monday.