Gamle Stavanger

I have had little free time for stitching, but I am still attending my weekly creative embroidery class, we will stop for summer break in mid-July. I love my weekly class but I have to confess I struggle to come up with designs sometimes and have difficulty picturing the final piece. A few of my fellow students have worked some Canvaswork (Needlepoint) pieces and I really liked the idea of playing with different thread thicknesses and textures. Landscape or buildings translate well to canvaswork stitches so I have chosen a design based on the old weatherboard houses in 'Gamle' (Old) Stavanger, Norway, we lived in Stavanger for a couple of years at the turn of the millennium in a house very similar to these.

I simplified my chosen picture and drew the main lines onto my canvas with a permanent marker. I am using white 18ct canvas as I had some in my stash but an antique colour would have been easier to completely cover with threads.

I have a mixture of Appleton's wool, Stranded Cotton, Overdyed Cottons and Perle to play with, the colours were easy, the problem was deciding on stitches. I have had considerable help from my tutor and these excellent books.

I started with the path and then moved to the greenery areas, these will be overstitched with Pinks to represent the flowers. This greens in this section were worked in leaf stitch.

Once I had the hang of these stitches I jumped over to the other side, the green is Shell stitch and the white weatherboarding is fern stitch turned 90 degrees, you don't have to follow the direction in the book if you don't want to!

This is the result after four lessons, still a way to go!

There is no class next week, but I have enough knowledge now to complete these sections at home, whether I will have time or not is another matter!