Poppy landscape

This is a photo taken by my dearest friend, J, I thought it would make a great composition for a needle felting project.

Having considered for a long time, I decided to take the plunge and buy a second hand embellisher so I was keen to experiment. I find the embellisher quite ferocious but it does make light work of creating backgrounds.

The photograph is more of a linear style, so I began with the three simple layers

1st stage, combination of dyed batting, felt and roving

I love the reflective quality of silk, using a pale blue for the sky, then following with strips of green felt – I laid the dyed roving on the top of this and the embellisher was very effective at getting the colours to blend in.

Adding more texture

What I enjoy most about this medium is the way you can build the layers and create depth, the wool creates a lovely texture of stems and grasses. I decided to add the wheat heads in a lovely deep ochre, using tapestry wool.

continuing to add depth using wool and roving

Tapestry wool is wonderful to use as the colours are varied, I enjoyed adding various shades of green – the embellisher making light work of this task; it would have taken me a few days to get to this stage, instead of the few short hours.

hand embroidery

I moved to hand embroidery, creating the ears of corn with a chain stitch, the poppies were silk again, using a buttonhole embroidery stitch to secure them. As the layers are created using wool, felt and batting, it is still quite easy to get the needle through all the layers.

I used feather stitch on the sky, to give the impression of clouds – I think, next time I won’t embellish through the silk as it seems to have crushed it somewhat, and lost some of its lustre but the texture is still effective.