It’s going to require a little more precision and therefore a little more planning than I usually indulge in. So there’s also going to be a bit more experimentation than usual. I might not go to the length of actually charting the finished piece, but I’m certainly intending to have a very clear idea of what is going where, and what thread or threads I’m going to use.
I’ve been intrigued to note that, from pulling out a huge variety of threads to use, an assortment of fibres and an assortment of colours, I’m beginning to restrict my ideas to a much smaller palette of threads and stitches.
As I looked at the picture more closely, it became clear that the squares within the beds were topiary pyramids. Maybe some are suffering from box blight, hence the colour variations, but this gave me a good place to start experimenting. I’ve gone to the trouble of framing up a piece of the canvas I’m going to use, so as to experiment properly, and my first observation is that I am going to need to be on top form when I work this, because it’s dreadfully easy to go adrift!
However, I think it’s fair to say that Diagonal Rhodes Stitch makes a fine pyramid in topiary! The straight stitches are in the same colour, which they won’t be, but I think the stitch length, compared with the Rhodes Stitch, looks about right for the width of the little hedges that create the strapwork effect.
I’ve also been testing out other threads and stitches – tapestry wool, soft embroidery cotton, stranded cotton. I want to have varying textures and patterns within the strapwork, creating a nice harmonious whole – but a stitched harmonious whole. I could easily chart – or even freehand – a tent stitch reproduction of the picture, but it wouldn’t have the personality needed for the place it’s going to live. Textured stitches will help to create that personality.
The birch besom leaning up against the fence rather caught my attention, because we had one when I was a little girl, and I’ve not seen another for years. Like all these low-tech looking things, it takes more to make one than you’d think, but they are good at what they’re good at.
They’re harder to make in stitches than you’d think, as well. I’ve used some fine unmercerised cotton, and some of that accursed stranded linen that DMC used to produce. Honestly, I’m all in favour of experimentation, but what one earth were they thinking? It’s ridiculously fragile, even on a fabric with huge holes, it’s uneven without being pretty, and it doesn’t even produce texture. But it was the colours I needed, and I didn’t want any shine…
At this point, I frolicked gently – it’s finished! – and took it off the frame.
Only to discover that, in fact, it wasn’t finished!
One colour of the chimney and a bit of one of the clouds remained unstitched. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d been working on it from the start, but as it was passed on by someone else, and I think, looking at the stitching, that at least two someones before me were involved, I’m not surprised to find bits missing. Fortunately, they weren’t hard to fix!
And now it really is finished! It’s turned out much better than it might have done, and it wants blocking and mounting in some way, but I think our local charity shop stands a chance of selling it once that’s done..
Update: my cousin is looking to furnish her office and has asked for it in return for a donation to my pet charity!
Once I’d done all the masses of what for want of a better term I am going to call long and short stitch, using blends of stranded cotton, I sat back and looked.
I’ve added some long stitches to the tail, using two differently coloured strands of stranded cotton twisted together. I’m not sure whether to add more of this, or even whether to leave it in, but I wanted to help emphasize the length of the tail, and this is one way to do it.
The conversation is very clear to see now, I think. The colours are similar, but not the same, the technique is the same, and there is a real sense that Dobbin and the dog (Polly the pointer?) are having a proper catch-up.
I wonder what they are talking about?
Actually, once I looked at the conversation as it stands, I thought there was a little still missing…
That’s better.
It’s nothing like the thickness the mane would truly have, but I think it gives just the right recollection of the shaggy long hair of Dobbin’s mane, and the blue cotton on the harness and the back of the saddle suggest sunlight on the leather.
I do wonder whether the mane is quite luxuriant enough. Like the tail, if I decide it needs more, I can probably add some length; if I’d been thinking straighter, I might have given him a short cropped mohican, because I suppose you don’t want to give an enemy something to hang on to as you charge them down, which a mane might well.
But then, no-one suggests that warhorses had docked tails, so I may be overthinking this!
There are all of about six stitches of white silk around the eye (my flat silk from working the Amarna Family Group) and they seem to be just enough to make it suitably staring. This is clearly a Visit of Ceremony, and Mars is determined not to let the side down, so he is focused and crisp in his movements.
I’m going to give him a saddlecloth in William’s heraldic colours, so I am leaving all that unstititched for now. And I have made very sure that the darks help him to feel solid and stocky.
I did say that I would be going around in circles for quite some time!
The stitching of the “dapples” in the same colour as the background give him a slightly thicker coat than a modern race horse, and I am hoping that the alternation of the textures will help knit the piece together, creating a a sort of counterchange: the shield and saddlecloth smooth, like the top of the wall and the path beneath his hooves, while the walls and horse are slightly rough, bouncing the light in different directions.
Incidentally, while I’m working this section, I’ve been thinking and planning for the “frame”, and the ideas keep changing beneath my feet. So if you were wondering where my plans were – the answer is “in flux”!
You may recall that I started on the horse in the canvaswork, and then suffered from Doubts. I thought it looked an unholy mess, and diverted my thoughts to the fence by the cottage. Which turned out very pleasingly, which is always a relief.
Then my cousin made a passing comment that helped me unstick the problem – she said that there are two conversations going on in the picture, one between the man and the woman, the other between the dog and the horse. That being the case, it seemed to me that I should maybe use the same technique for the dog and the horse, even the same sort of thread, so as to highlight the conversation.
I wanted to create the impression of fur, but nothing too shaggy, so while I wrestled with unpicking the horse, I started on the dog. Stranded cotton, separated and recombined using several close colours (I have a lot of stranded cotton, so this is all still stash), and then worked upward from the feet and the end of the tail in something a bit like long and short stitch.
I think this has worked well. We have friends whose dog is a similar shape and colouring to this one, and it was fun to sit and stitch with her in mind.
Of course, an entire horse (I’m calling him “Dobbin”, of course!) is going to take some time to do, since I need to work upwards. But at least I’ve made a good start here, smaller stitches around the hoof, longer stitches, with still longer ones planned, for the tail.
He’s a rough-coated working country horse, not a sleek and shining racehorse, so if the colours are clouded a bit, and the darks and lights not as distinct as they might be, that’s all to the good.
I’ve continued to work on the tent stitch, too, every which way, as it is in the sections already worked when I got the canvas, so the whole thing is getting closer to being finished..
I fished out the blocking board in order to start preparing to block the canvaswork “Constable” when it’s finished, only to meet a roadblock – the blocking board was already occupied!
Now, I recall – vaguely – finding this around the Diamond Jubilee, and thinking that Grandmama might have stitched it, either around the Coronation or around the Silver Jubilee, but then, now I’ve looked at the back, I can’t imagine that Grandmama would have been stitching as messily as this in 1952, given the quality of her stitching during the War, and given that I was very much alive and paying attention during the Silver Jubilee, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered her stitching it then.
And I don’t.
At the same I can I assure you it is too well stitched to have been stitched by me at the time, and besides that, I can assure you that I would absolutely remember attempting to stitch it!
I’ve decided that I am going to try to finish it this year. I’ve no idea who started it, but something begun Who-Knows-When by Who-Knows-Who is going to be finished this year by me.
William’s horse is going to need a name, isn’t he! At the moment, suggestions range from “Woros” (think about it for a moment…!) to “Champion The Wonder Horse” (I imagine his groom calls him Bob!) to “Jeff”, via “Mars”, “Thunderer”, and “Dobbin”. I think “Dobbin” is better suited to the horse in the canvaswork!
However, onward!
As it turned out, the colours I chose didn’t quite shade through each other as I would have wished, since two of them were too close together (however good the pictures, online ordering has hazards), so it took me some time to work out what to do.
That “what” turned out to include fishing out a pale cream from among my Thistle Threads reels, which included some filament silk, fortunately. It’s rather finer than the rest of the silk in this piece, so I need six lengths to match four from those.
I do wonder whether the tail is quite luxuriant enough, but if it looks a bit spindly when the whole thing is finished, I can add more – although stitching over the wall is quite effortful!
Please note, also, the wonderful blued-steel hooves. Unless they are slate!
I know that roans are not usually shown as dappled, but I decided that I wanted some texture in the horse. I’m intending to make the shield as smooth as possible, and I think a bit of surface variation in the horse will increase the contrast.
So, I shall be going round and round in circles for quite some time!
Years and years ago, I bought a white cotton shirt and a long cotton petticoat at a vide-grenier in the Gers, where we were visiting a friend who was restoring an old farmhouse about a hundred yards from the route of the “Camino” to Compostela to run as a pilgrim hostel. I don’t wear either of them much, the petticoat being a little long, and the shirt a bit short in the arm, but I do occasionally just look at them to delight in the work that was put into them.
There is machine stitching on them – they’re not as old as all that! – but there is a lot of hand work too.
The careful reinforcement between the ruffle and the edge of the garment is a case in point, with a single length of neat feather stitches providing just the variation in texture it needs to stand out, subtly, but definitely. From a distance, it looks almost like a braid, but instead of being bought and applied, it was something the maker could do by themselves.
The ruffle itself is a super-simple version of broderie anglaise, a single eyelet within a pointed edge, hand-finished.
Well, now…
I don’t always do epic garments like the Jacket of Many Stitches or the Coat of Many Flowers, but sometimes I do decide that a garment needs a little bit of lift.
Expect to see rows of feather stitch popping up on assorted garments for the next several years!
In her book, Tanya suggested using a slightly thicker thread for the ground (that is, more strands in the needle), to help it look a bit more uneven without interfereing with the glorious light effects of silk. I decided to vary the different colours as well, to help with that effect. This is the mid tone, although the “dark” isn’t so much dark as a different tint – that’s because I bought it online, and when I started stitching with it, it wasn’t quite the colour I thought it would be.
That said, I think it has turned out very well indeed. I enjoyed trying to keep the curves curving the way they needed to, varying the way each colour filled the allotted space, changing the way the lines flowed. It somehow does manage to look a little like an illustration in a book of fairy tales, partly because of the lines of colour, partly, I think, because the lightest of the greens is very much in that vein.
Not an Arthur Rackham illustration, obviously!
I love the way the grass has made the horse look much crisper, as though he’s conscious that this is An Occasion, and he’s putting his best foot forward.
But I do keep looking at him very panicked, to make sure that he’s not going to fall over. I once did a painting of an elephant, and it was only afterwards that I realised that the poor beast would have overbalanced and landed on his side with a rib-crushing Thump! if what I had painted had been accurate observation…
The next canvaswork project, commissioned by my cousin, has had a slight change of direction. It is still based upon this drone shot, but it is to be full coverage rather than voided stitches, and it’s going to sit on her bed, worked in colours from the curtains, to pull those colours onto the bed.
So when I went to visit a few weeks ago, I did a site visit – as shown here, including the Hound of the Doleful Countenance, for scale. We’ve decide that the final cushion is to be a rather Biblical cubit in length (that is, forearm from elbow to fingertips), which will go from the middle of one black cushion to the middle of the other, and at least a handspan high.
I’ve also brought home the cover for the doorstop, in the fabric I need to reflect in my thread choices – which means, not only did I not have such a weight to bring home, but my cousin also still has her doorstop!
My next job is to draft out the pattern to transfer to the canvas. Once upon a time, I had canvaswork design software, and I might have tried to chart a design first, but it didn’t include some of the stitches I might want to use, and with so many of the more unusual threads in my view, I will be doing a lot of experimenting along the way!
