Quiet Woods
Machine and Hand Embroidery

This piece, as with all my pieces, was created with a specific purpose in mind. I like to challenge myself in various ways and at this time the challenge was to construct a piece that would show sunshine and shadows in the deep woods. It is based on a picture I saw once of large trees in a deep forest with flowers among the grasses.

It is simple to do this with paint in that you merely lighten the colour to create the sunshine. In my case I am stitching over this with single and double strand threads. Thus the light areas become lost in the stitching.

In this case I chose my threads carefully, using lighter, brighter colours for the sunny areas and duller, darker colours for the shadowed areas. It was challenging but rewarding when I saw the finished product.

The one major point to remember is that a selection of light, medium and dark colours in one colour range will not work. We need to look at the colour of the flower in the sunshine that is often brighter, more vivid while in the shade it is more subdued, greyed. For this reason I always choose my blues from several different ranges of blue. One may be almost mauve or purple while another is greyed. It is this mix of colours that makes the piece successful.

To become a successful artist of any kind, one must look at nature, study the colours and the patterns there. Use your eyes. Get down among the wild grasses and look at the patterns and designs found there. Examine some of the very tiny blossoms found there.