Earlier in the year I attended a great workshop organised by Skipton Stitchers, the tutor was Laura Edgar who does the most stunning pieces of textile art inspired in particular by the seascapes of the Northumberland coast near where she lives. Here’s a link to here website where she has some amazing examples. We were asked to bring a picture of a scene we wanted to stitch, I chose a moody photo of Scarborough beach I took at the end of our Cleveland Way walk a few years back…

Laura’s technique is to use lots of different textiles, often worn and distressed, ripped or frayed, layered over each other with lots of free stitching over the top….completely out of my comfort zone, but sometimes I surprise myself!! Laura was a great tutor, very inspiring and encouraging.

Here’s my piece by the end of the workshop, still a lot of work to do, it’s like the bare bones of the picture, I liked it enough to want to finish it…

As you can see there were still lots of pins holding various scraps of fabric in place. The shiny areas of the photo are organza, it’s not actually as shiny in reality, just a little! It does vary hugely though depending on the light when I photograph it, the sea is identical in the photo below but looks very different. I had done a little stitching round the sun just to give myself the idea of how it would work.

I felt the headland was just too black, OK it’s very black in the photo but against my sky and sea, it looked a bit too much. I removed the black lace and used a strip of dark grey lace instead, it just softens it a bit.

Over the last couple of evenings I’ve been adding stitching. So far I’ve stitched over the headland with running stitch and feather stitch, I’ve also done a fair amount of the darker sky area with feather stitch.

It’s amazing how these photos differ so much, I think the last one is probably nearest the actual piece.

So I’ve still a lot to do, and it’s probably one of those where it’s difficult to know when to stop, but I’m happy with it so far.