Vale Of Evesham V

I have tidied up the individual elements of the latest Vale of Evesham. This means ironing everything which had a painted warp to set the paint, tucking in any odd ends, embroidering stamens on the flowers. I visited a good Art shop in Studley today and came away with some black mount board to back everything with.

Winter Orchard - white warp, dark brown weft.

Spring Orchard - white warp, orange and pink weft. It all looked rather samey so I embroidered stamens in gold thread and half way through decided that was a bit samey too. So the gold ones are dotted about and I found some Oliver Twist space dyed silk thread to do the rest with.

Summer Orchard - white warp, dark brown tree trunks, two shades of green in the weft for the leaves. Pale green only for the grass between the trees. Possibly the most successful of the lot.

Autumn Orchard. Plums on a white warp with two shades of purple. One thread was solid dark purple, the other space dyed light purple and white

Instead of plums you could have apples. The pale brown ones in the middle are my favourite Egremont Russets. The warp has been painted in swirls of dark green and red. Not sure I like this one.

Or pears. This warp was also painted in swirls of green and two different colours have been used in the weft for each row of pears. These have worked better than the apples.

So I think the Pears and the Summer Orchard have worked best. Tomorrow I will mount everything up.

Artistic Decision Time (2)

I have corrected/shortened all the drafts carrying out all the decisions  for the four sides of the Vale of Evesham. But I thought Side 3 Summer could do with improvement and fattened up all the leaves. 

It is still a bit lacking so I machine embroidered a few leaves on it. If you look carefully, you will see two leaves embroidered in the same green as the background leaves. These were done first  and the thread selected as a good match for the silk weft. Instead of toning nicely, they are invisible. So I used a different green. Still not enough extra leaves.

The number of leaves embroidered on is up from six to twelve. Better but not good enough.

Now the number of extra leaves is eighteen. And I think this is acceptable. So off to weave another four sides.