The View of the Excavation Finished…
Foreground Group
The last group took a lot of stitching, restitching, unpicking and restitching. I couldn’t seem to get any of it right, and there are one or two bits I’m still not 100% sure about, even now…
The pale figure, bending over beside the little flag is in Spanish Knotted Feather Stitch, and the nearer bending figure is in Mountmellick Stitch. I was surprised that it was quite so hard to find suitably broad line stitches for the purpose; when you’re looking for characterful narrow stitches, you can only find broad ones, and when you’re looking for broad ones, by some strange alchemy only narrow ones catch your eye…
View Of The Excavation
The creamy white headscarf ran through Crested Chain Stitch (no!) and several stitches I hated so much I didn’t even record them, before I finally settled on three rows of Braid Stitch.
So at last, after much fiddling around, the View Of The Excavation is finished.
I’m fairly happy with it, actually. The trail of people into the distance creates a pleasing pattern, and I think that the alternation of the colours works well. Furthermore, as I wished, the Egyptian labourers and supervisors are the stars. There is a European, but he’s mostly concealed by the others.
There may be a few tweaks – not least I have yet to make sure that it works as a counterpoint to the Map of Amarna – but I think that at last it is finished for the time being!
So much thought and so much detail has gone into this scene!
It is beautiful Rachel. I love the perspective and the very desert like color scheme. Captures Egypt so well.
I quite like the head dress. The entire piece has a lot of nice texture. I would love to see this in person.
It looks great. Nicely balanced and with plenty of interest for a close-up second look.
I know what you mean about the stitches you need going into hiding until you’re desperately looking for a different kind of stitch – they love to do that to me, too.
looks beautiful to me.
Its gorgeous! I too like the head dress. You achieved perfect perspective with the figures in the background. Its absolutely beautiful.
Applause! It turned out much better than I expected. All those fat/thin lines look terrific.
I enlarged the photo – your stitching is wonderful, and there is a great sense of movement of the figures walking off into the distance.
I love the effect you have achieved with the ude of different stitches.
A great achievement. The textural reference of the stitches, palette and perspective are excellent, and there’s a real sense of recession into the distant sands. 5*!
it looks really good, I particularly like the shadows. It is really tricky to incorporate a wide range of stitches into a piece, particularly a scene like this. I always end up falling back on old favourites.
It’s so lovely! Well done.
Love the balance of colours and textures in this,especially the thinning of the lines as the figures recede into the distance.
This looks great on it’s own but I think it will look even better when you put it all together.
so many beautiful details Rachel…..I think you are being way too hard on yourself. I think you need to take a bow….pat yourself on the back several times and feel amazing!