Chekamus Canyon River - Day 15

Detail takes time.
With other commitments later, this was a short day.
All these sections were assembled off the canvas: a sandwich of 'solvy' over tulle, washed and trimmed before stitching to the scene.

Two separate pieces here clearly defined by colour.

Three pieces...2 saplings over a bush.

Every day the shrubbery creeps over the rock face.

Chekamus Canyon River - Day 14

I couldn't post yesterday. I had to re charge my camera!

But I think I'm very near the end of the evergreens.
I've used a number of thread colours to add depth and shadow but now it's time to work the outer layers of the trees.
I first thought this variegated thread would be too bright but it added the 'life' I needed. For the last panel of branches in the hoop I used two different threads, adding a little more variation to the needle colour.

The lighter colours lift the branches and more the tree forward.

Chekamus Canyon River - Day 12

A lot more deciduous foliage is assembled and stitched........................

and then covered with thick evergreen boughs in two colours.

Chekamus Canyon River - Day 11

Roughly four hours today.
Filling in all the foliage and evergreens is slow work.
The main tree needed four separate constructions to fill out this section satisfactorily.
At this rate I think it will be about another week to finish.

Chekamus Canyon River - Day 10

Short day to day.
Things are really slowing down because every branch is planned.

Since I'm working with the really close images, even the branches show, so in response they're beefed up and stitched thoroughly.

The picture shows the size of the individual stitches. I'm working with a very slow stitch and dragging the thread out up to between half an inch and a quarter of an inch.

 

 I didn't want to use my very best threads yet so this is all being done with inexpensive serging thread. At this speed it stands up very well, but I'm going through a lot.

The look is very life like. To anchor the stitches to the background, I'm tacking down the ends of the loops. I haven't cut the netting away nearly anywhere near the precision of the trees before hand as I think the structure would still be fragile. Having more netting helps in the security.

The last pictures show the three sessions in place.
You can see that progress is slow.

Chekamus Canyon River - Day 9

I got off to a late start this morning. When I realized it was 17 days 'til Christmas......I went shopping.
Whew!

Most of the right side of this piece is in place. If I do add more trees it will be after I finish the left side and see how things balance.

Chekamus Canyon River - Day 8

From here on, everything that is stitched is for a specific location. In other words the individual trees are 'painted' one by one. This really slows the process as there is a specific order in their placement. Most are going over rock faces that also need definition as I move forward. Order become very important to make sure that branches that should lay over another, do so.

I jumped from rock face to rock face on either side of the river as well as elevation.

It looks as though I didn't get very far. But in spite of some distractions this morning. I'm happy to stop here.

Chekamus Canyon River - Day 7

It was nice to finally add some deciduous foliage amid the unrelenting evergreen forests.

Chekamus River Canyon - Day 6

After evaluating the increasing distortion in this piece I decided it was time to add batting and backing. The piece was moving because my stabilizer was tearing minutely and stretching in spots. This was from the repeated pinning and repining to the design wall and putting it through my machine.
So now it should remain straight, There is still a bit of wowing in the river but that will disappear when I finish that section....last.

Again working on the right side, I defined rock formations with stitching and added a number of trees.
As the trees get larger and are designed for specific spots, the work gets slower.

Chekamus River Canyon - Day 5

I spent an hour 'sketching' small trees onto netting. These were to be positioned down the distant slope on the right side of the canyon. However, when I went to place them in position I realized I had to deal with the sky...finally. It would have been very difficult to stitch around the tiny trees.

Necessity forced a decision and I went with close, straight lines. This took the rest of the morning.

I placed registration marks with a water erasable pen on the sky to help keep the stitching even and straight and sewed lines about 1/4 in apart. I used the pressure foot to give me the width between the lines.
A spritz with water and the lines disappeared.

As the ends of the lines stopped at the edge of previous stitching I worked the tails through to the back side, combed them in one direction and glued them in place with a strip of stabilizer. This strip will be incorporated with the final stitching.

After a late lunch, I was finally in a position to attach all those trees I had assembled in the morning.

Tomorrow is another day. 😁

Chekamus River Canyon - Day 4

Moved forward by two hill slopes this morning.

The whole picture puts it all in perspective.

I think I"ll shift to the other side for awhile.

Chekamus River Canyon - Day 3

For those keeping track, this is 5 hours of machine work.

The very distant slopes are covered with trees. That was simple but lengthy machine work.

The back illustration shows the volume of stitches in this area

.
The green swath down the left side, forest, I worked off the piece in a hoop.

As the size of the thread painting area gets larger the more distortion can occur. Though it may not be

readily visible in the pictures there are many different shades of green being used here. 

The final part for today was comprised of trees in the left hand section that rise above the slope edge and sit in front of the distant hill. It's these 'eruptions' that give life to the work.

My twitch muscles have given out for the day. I'll pick this up again tomorrow.

Salmon Fishing - Final

With this sort of piece you can keep going forever.

After adding some highlights to the back of the bear, hand stitching to define the limb contours and adding angleina into the sewn cheesecloth I declare this Bear ..... done.
( My hands are sooo soft)

Grizzly in the Salmon Stream - Day 4

The under coat is complete.
The muzzle/mouth I made off the body of the work so I could finish the water behind the head. I was concerned it's not attach to rest of the stabilizer. It might separate from the rest as it was needle punched over the water and all the cheesecloth. So I machine stitched it in place.

The water along the bottom edge is complete and the bottom edges of the bear have been expanded to the full pattern size.,

The final coat will differentiate the limbs and finish the shadow, but for now, I'm going to leave this guy here and switch to the Polar Bear.

Grizzly in the Salmon Stream - Day 3

The first? layer of the water is in place. This is all cheescloth.

I'll live with this until I finish felting the bear.

Grizzly in the Salmon Stream

I wanted to work on this fellow today........ because he's already haunting my sleep.
There are so many ways to portray water. The issue is to use the method and materials that fit the tone of the piece.

I started out with my tried and true embroidery hoop stitches, looking to make swirls and splash.

It just didn't seen to have enough 'meat'.

I found a great transition using shredded cheesecloth. By taking small pieces, about 3 inches square, and distorting it diagonally, it gave a an unstructured fill.

This will need to be anchored under netting. No surprise there. It allows me to stick in even more unstable materials.

This worked out very well.
There are two colours of cheesecloth here. One pure white, out of the package and the other muddied with grey? blue?

Landscape With Bear - Final

Two hours finished the thread painting and an envelope finish.
I still have one more embroidered bear but I think I'll save that and move to the felting.

Collage Fish - Final

I brought this down to 20 inches square. It was originally 28x 40. That's a lot of waste.
But it brought importance back to the fish.

I wanted a very light finish, but it needed a definite edge.
This is raw edge with an overcast line of three strands of wool.