Embroidery in Progress: Winter Trees

A couple of weeks ago, I was outside in the morning with my boys, waiting for the bus to arrive, and I was struck by the winter tree branches against the grey sky. I ran in to get my camera and took several photos, including this one.

I've always liked tree branches, especially bare ones. I can get completely lost in that negative space. I thought about whether I wanted to draw the branches, or maybe paint them, and then, since I'd been feeling a tug towards embroidery, not having done any in a bit, I decided to try to render the branches in floss.

This is my progress so far. If you don't embroider, you might not realize...this is hours and hours of stitching.

I've got the main bit of tree completed, and now I'm working on the thinner background branches. I really wasn't sure how to approach this, so I just jumped right in. I began by backstitching the outlines but quickly abandoned that in favor of working the trees of a piece as I went. I've got a mix of stitches, too, depending on what I think I need in the spot, but it's mostly backstitch, stem stitch, and a few chain stitches and French knots here and there. You can't really see it at all in this photo, even when clicking on it, but there's a lighter grey/green here and there within all that grey, and the background branches are different shades of grey as well.

This is Grand Experiment, and I'm figuring it out as I go and learning, too, but overall, I'm pleased. I look at it sometimes while working on it and just get really happy about it. I'm not making it to be anything, like a cushion or something like that; I'm making it to hang on the wall, although I haven't decided quite how I want to arrange that yet. Like everything else with this experiment, I'll figure that out when I get there, I'm sure.

If you want to see more in-progress photos, the Flickr set is here; I'll add to it as I go, probably.

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