Over the hills

I have been stitching hills for the past few days.

I begun this piece some time ago, but there hasn't been much to show you until now - rather it would have looked really strange and not made much sense. I have for a long time wanted to embroider raised figures. I have done a few but nothing as big as this one. This will eventually have a large raised figure (no those funny looking violet sticks are not strangely coloured tree trunks, they will at some point become legs) as the main motif, but as with all things raised, I usually complete the background stitching first. It has been rather enjoyable filling each hilly bumps with its own pattern and getting them all to gel.

I haven't used any difficult stitches - the three hills above are filled with blanket stitch - with a scattering for French knots (or were they colonial?), chain stitch and the front one with close rows of cable stitch . 

I am particularly happy with the large hill above. Again the it is not a tricky stitch, just rows of spaced blanket stitch, three in each block and each row stitched into the previous. Like this:

I am hoping to finish the last two hills this week so that I can begin working on the figure over the weekend. Let's see how it goes.

Have a lovely Thursday,
Anna x