Stitching with a Shimmy

Well, I finished another one. I find that since defining exactly what I want to accomplish with this project I’m finding it easier to excavate the time in my schedule to actually DO it! Some stitches are more difficult than others for this, however. Trying to use them in new ways in figural embroidery rather than just as the geometric lines that I’ve put on my band sampler in the past is a bit more tricky for some stitches than others.

Take Chevron stitch, for example. It’s inherently a line stitch, although I could work it in other geometric patterns, it’s always going to have that very triangular look.

I used it in layers for this piece – for some reason I couldn’t get America the Beautiful out of my head this week, so I used it as inspiration! I’m pretty happy with how it came out, though using this stitch for landscapes probably isn’t something I’ll do on a regular basis. I didn’t use a pattern, per se, just started at the top with the mountains and worked down. I thought about using the yellow in an arc at one of the corners for sun, but decided it would just be too much for the design to handle.

Purple mountains are in 2 strands of DMC cotton floss, with the snow in one strand. The “amber waves” are in 3 strands, and the grass/whatever in the front is in 4. AND on the green layers I not only added another strand, but when I crossed the top bar of the chevron stitch I used Stamen stitch for the cross-piece instead of the straight stitch that’s usual. (Stamen stitch: French knot with long tail.)  You can click on the photo to see more detail.