How to easily stitch a mindful slow stitching landscape embroidery!

hi everyone today I am going to show you how to make these really easy slow stitched landscapes my name is Sarah and welcome to my channel Sarah Humphrey embroidery and I know we have lots of new people coming to watch the channel we have been broadcasting for about 10 years now so it's lovely to welcome you people all the time I'd like to say a special welcome to you and I hope you enjoy this video do go and check out our other videos we've got over 340 to date I think it is um go and have a look and see if there's something else you like and see what else we've got on offer so I do get loads of questions mainly from new viewers to the channel um asking can you make me a video on such and such or have you got a video on this topic and 99 of the time we do already have it covered we already have a video on it so the easiest way to go and check and see what we've got um on offer is to click our little channel channel logo that will take you to the home page of our Channel and you can search all the videos there you can search them by the date that they went up in either first or last if you want to start at the beginning or you can have a look in the playlist and search them by subject we've got hours and hours and hours of videos so do go and have a look and see if we've got your subject covered that you're interested in we do upload videos most Fridays most Friday afternoons at 3 30 Greenwich and meantime and if you click the Subscribe button and that little bell there that will give you a notification of when we put a new video up so that you don't miss anything and if you do enjoy a video and you would like to support this channel you can click the little super thanks button so I would like to say thank you this week to Beth Ada and Laura for doing that it looks a little bit like this here and they have clicked that button and they have shown their support and donated to us so thank you very much for doing that it's much appreciated so having said we do upload every Friday we have just had a couple of Fridays off it's very rare that we do that and Jonathan and I have been away on a holiday and we've been cruising the Norwegian fjords which were absolutely beautiful they were really stunning and I thought it'd be really nice to do a piece inspired by that but also something that you could easily adapt to somewhere you have been or somewhere that you live or something like that so I'm going to show you how you can do that so we are going to make this little picture that I showed you briefly earlier something along these lines a very simple one and you'd be surprised how easily you can make something like this and as I've said I have made it into a picture I've actually put it in a frame but if you're somebody who likes to make something practical out of your embroidery and you're thinking what can I make out of my slow stitching do go and check out this video up in the corner here 20 things that you can make with your slow stitching and I think you will enjoy that one so I'm going to show you this little one but I did do a larger piece as well inspired by my holiday I wanted to come back and Stitch um Stitch something from the fuels because they were really stunning and I've made this larger one here I'm going to show you this one in more detail at the end because I've got some images of the layers and the processes that I went through and this one is a little bit more detailed than the smaller one so we will come back to that one at the end but I just want to show you the processes with a much simpler one first so as I said you can work from an image if you want or you could just make a landscape up if you want to make a landscape up that can be a lot of fun so I did the larger one from an image but then from that I just sort of got the idea of what a landscape might look like so I just want to run through that with this little one here in the frame so you have to think of this in layers so we have the background layer come back to the front basically back to front and you've got a sky at the top then I've got some sort of mountains or fields or some sort of land then I put water in the water looks really nice in these Landscapes it just separates it out a little bit and you can sort of see that depth in your image and then I've got a bit of land again in the foreground at the front so I've kind of got a background a middle ground and a foreground that makes some really nice layers and then I just added a little bit of detail on this one he needed something else to sort of be a bit of a focal point and I put put a little sheep on there little wooden sheep that I had and then I've just used some very simple stitching to sew these layers together so I've layered everything in one go and I just stitched through all of the layers and I've just got some very simple running Stitch here in a variegated thread so the variegated color of the thread gives me a bit more interest I've done some different patterns in the sky to make it a little bit more skylike I've got a little bit of um lace here to make a kind of a cloud in the sky and just some very simple stitches just to hold these layers together I've done a little slow Stitch Circle a little spiral in the water here give a bit more of a watery effect and again just a little bit of a feature on the grass and I've just done some straight stitches here to sort of represent a bit of a grass theme there and that sits over the water so you can again see those layers that I've got so that's what we are going to do so I'm going to show you um how to get started so you're going to need some Fabrics basically for this and I've got a big pile here that I'm going to use but I just want to talk briefly about where you can get some Fabrics from because I've done lots of slow stitching videos before we have a playlist on those so do go check that out if you're interested in slow stitching and you're wondering what the hex low stitching is and you'd like a bit more of an explanation we've got one on that so do check out the playlist for our slow stitching videos and I made a little bit of an assumption really that I shouldn't have done that everybody has a stash of fabric and just because I've got quite a big stash and if you're a quilter you'll certainly have um certainly have lots of fabric pieces lying around and a dress maker too I've got loads of bits of fabric from leftover dress making projects but if you're not either of those you probably haven't got a stash of fabric so I just wanted to very briefly about where you could get some um and the main place that you could go you can buy some new pieces but go and check out the charity shops in the thrift stores and see what you can find in those and a really good one to get his children's clothes because you don't need tons of fabric to do this and I went to my local one and they had a big plastic bin at the front and it was like three children's garments for a pound I think it was it was ridiculous and they've got really beautiful little Fabrics as a little colored dress but look at that beautiful print on that fabric there really lovely and you get quite a lot of fabric in just a little garment like that you can undo the seams and they've got buttons on the backs it get some buttons with it as well and so you get quite a lot of fabric out of a very small garment so they don't need to be adult clothing and I've often bought adults while I'm thinking I really like that pattern I use that and then I end up just wearing it because I like it this is another little dress with a beautiful print around the bottom and obviously you've got the white fabric as well it's also got a little inner skirt so there's a load of white fabric there that you can paint on or you could print on um and you could color you could dye it so there's lots of little bits of it you can use there's a little shirt here thank you but look at the wonderful pattern on it as well and again that's got little buttons on it as well so you've even got matching buttons if you wanted to use some buttons so that's a great place to look for some really nice pretty printed Fabrics go and look in the guys clothes section as well for ties those Christmas presents that nobody really wanted um usually end up in the charity shop in the thrift stores and these are often made of silk as well so this has got really beautiful material and you think well there's not much there but if you unpick the back seam it opens out to um that size again to actually get quite a wide bit of fabric you've also got a lining Fabric in there that you can use as well with it and you get a really long piece and you only need some small pieces really for slow Stitch you don't need that piece so you could raid the other half's wardrobe maybe he's got a tie he's not worn for a long time so he's not going to wear again and hope he doesn't notice you put it in a stitch how many ties can you wear basically eat that many um man's scarf and the really interesting thing about looking in charity shops and places like that is you haven't got to think do I like it because I want to wear it you can look at it and think would that be good for stitching on so this one probably not the nicest but it's got really interesting pattern on it it's got a nice shiny fabric if you wanted a bit of texture in it you want you to say something different it's got a plain of fabric on the background as well so you've got again your two Fabrics that will go together it's got a little tassel on the bottom so that's really good as well so look for scarves and ties and look in the men's section the men's section you'll often get more neutral Fabrics as well you might get lots of Brands and gray so if you wanted something with that kind of tone on it we're going to check out the lens of it um ladies scarves as well uh sort of chiffonly silk one that's been dyed it could be interesting this was a bag that I had that I used for for ages and ages I used to love this but I'm really interesting and fabric it's got some sort of woven bit in it as well really weird but it had a pen that leaked in the bottom of it and it sort of fell apart and had its day so I just cut the fabric out and I cut the fabric cushion covers this one is hanging around for Asian it's got these beads on the top and the bees kept falling off and I just got annoyed they ended up in the washing machine so I relegated it to the scrap pile and that's some really nice fabric that I can use there and I have indeed used to cut them back out not sure what I used that for now but the back is gone so I've got lots of fabric I can use I've got the beads as well and there's even a zip if I wanted to use the zip on it too so just have to get a bit of inventive you could look through your own wardrobe see what you don't use anymore and what could be used for slow stitching so that is a great place to look you can buy new Fabrics but you don't need much so just buy a little bit if you find a nice pattern that you want and you can always go and raid your friend's store if you've got a friend who does stitching going rate this does they've always got little bits and Bobs that they'll probably give you so I just wanted a little give you a little bit of an idea about where you can get some Fabrics from if you don't have a stash now what I like to do my slow stitching is have a base fabric to work on and I often just pick a plain one I like some sort of a blank canvas if you like but it doesn't have to be if you want to use one of those fabrics and go straight onto that you can I do recommend having something on the back of it though just to give you something a little bit solid to stitch into and to build up on if it's too flimsy it can get a bit out of control you might want to put a lot of embellishments on it so I do like to put something on the back I've just got a plain Calico cotton it's the cheapest cotton that you can buy it's really good this one on the top is a cotton it's one of our bio washed Cottons and that's a little bit of an end of a piece like I say it doesn't have to be a nice fresh clean new piece of fabric you can use any old piece of fabric as the layers if you want to and it's a great way to use up little bits and ends if you haven't got any left I'm going to do on that size you could make tidy little ones that make really nice cards a really nice little presence as well so you can do small ones I'm going to do one this size so I've got my two layers of fabric to start with and then I have got my pile of fabric that I'm going to choose from now I have just picked some things out I have got a lot of fabric and it can be a bit overwhelming so I think if you just limit it down and get a few things out and make something from those um because otherwise you'll be forever choosing some fabric so I have picked some kind of watery kind of mountain theme type fabric so I found some organzas which are really nice to layer up you can put them over other things and they'll give a nice watery Sheen to it I've got some nice patterned ones as well just little bits left over from something you don't need very much that was a dress that I made I've got some laces I do like putting laces in these they can look quite watery or like the sky or like the clouds as well so a few bits of leftover lace in there that's a bit of Thai fabric as in men's tie that we've just talked about lovely bit of silk brocade there um got some kind of lacy stuff here as well so I'm going to pull a few of these out and I'm going to start layering them up so I just want to show you this one here that's ready to stitch so I have done that with this one so remember those layers that I talked about think about the sky at the back and the foreground and then something in the middle and middle ground so here is my sky so I've got my two layers of Calico there and just that plain white fabric just to give myself a canvas to work on then I put a piece of organza down for the sky I've got a little bit of fabric I'll just unpin that you can see this was actually a map it has a fabric with a map on it which I thought was really wonderful and I've made the mountains out a little bit of scrap piece of that and I've actually cut that to shape you can start to form them if you want to this is slow stitching so it's about the process of it it's about the feel of the fabric and the thread not worrying so much about what you finish so don't think I've got to I've got to cut these really accurate pieces out and I've got to make that particular mountain or got to make that particular rock or tree or something like that just remember it's slow stitching it's about the process more than anything so just have a little bit of fun with this I've made a really rough Mountain shape it's not any amount you would recognize so I put a little bit of lace on top and that's been cut to the same shape as well then I've just got a little bit of that map fabric again it's quite nice if you can just bring Fabrics back in because that sort of ties the whole thing together so you just need a few and just repeat them and that will give you a nice cohesion to your piece without having to really think about it so there's a little bit of the map fabric again just to make a little bit more land a little bit of blue cotton that's just like that one for the water there and then just some different green Fabrics I've got a quilting cotton here and this is a green silk here and I've just made some sort of land shapes and they've come down into the middle so I can see a little bit of the water and I just had a little play around with those and I took them on and off and then when I got a composition that I liked I have just pinned the whole thing together so we're not going to stitch it separately we're not going to do any complicated piecing or anything like that you can just pin it all as one piece of fabric and then we will Stitch through that one piece of fabric and it already feels really nice to even with the pins in it um you can sort of feel the thickness of those Fabrics together it's quite a few Fabrics in some places so I can already feel this is going to be really nice and enjoyable to stitch so I'm going to do that process that one is ready to stitch but I just want to go through it so you can see me do that in action so I've got my two layers of fabric this is quite a small one so I'm just going to think small scale and have a little root through what I've got here so I quite like this is a nice piece of lace that I've got I thought that might make a nice sort of a sky effect not going for realism yeah just take a photograph if you want realism and don't worry about the size of it's too long I'm not going to cut it yet I'm just going to layer these things up when I've got what I want then I can cut it to the shape I wanted that makes quite a nice guy so then I want some mountains what can I use for mountains you could just pull out a few things you like actually this one keeps showing itself this is absolutely beautiful braid I found this yesterday when I was looking for some fabrics and it's kind of one of those things oh it's too nice to use and I'll use save it for another day and it's been in here forever so this might be a nice occasion to use it it's got some nice sparkly bits and maybe that could be good for some water this would also make a nice sky maybe we'll try that one instead you can just take them off and play around with them and just enjoy touching these Fabrics they're all different textures they're really lovely to have a play with and sometimes I think in our embroidery we can get a bit detached from the process of it we have it in a frame it's nice and tight and don't touch it don't get it dirty and you lose that connection a little bit so I really love this so to be able to just play a little bit I could even put that on top um I forgot here so I'm thinking water let's jump to the water that blue is quite nice just for a watery feel maybe that could go on top of it don't forget you've got your stitching as well so you can add detail you can add color with your thread so you don't need to get every color in I think that's quite a nice watery things going on there got to cut it to shape I don't have to all these straight lines that looks quite nice mounting maybe we need something to separate these colors I want to add a bit of organza that's really interesting a bit strong perhaps so a bit strong at big enough just about so if I layer that on top of there I can just get a little bit of a blue theme going on this is quite nice this is silk tissue this is I don't know what's left over from but it's well and truly hacked that one's nice let's put that one on again not worrying about the size just getting these layers so if we did that one on top there so got the pattern from that kind of lace coming through I can see it through the organza that's giving my sky a little bit of a blue color got some mountains there you need a bit of land in a minute there's my water so that I might just bring that down to there and cut that off at the bottom so I need some shapes in here silks Thai Silk is lovely you could just cut some little mountain shapes like I did here just some very simple curves just to give some mounting effects of this whereas the edge of my fabric is there so it's not wide enough but that doesn't matter I can use a different fabric with it this is also a tie and it's the same pattern and the same fabric but a different color so sometimes if you bring the same elements in if you use the same kind of pattern the material it will kind of look nice together even though it's not the same color so I could do two different colors like that I could cut this one in half and use that both ways I could have won that side along that side and then maybe just quite like that so let's just fold that and that's roughly what that would look like roughly you can see here instant landscape for me but you're not committing yourself you're not stitching anything down or you know you can just take it all apart there's a little bit of that map fabric Paraguay Paraguay could go the Norwegian landscape maybe just a little bit at the front there just to add another layer a little think about that this is a nice Woolen fabric this is left over from a cape that I made a strong color um just to get a bit technical about Landscapes the colors fade as they go into the distance so you can see less of the colors um and they're stronger at the front so you could think about that a little bit if you wanted to as well so I think we are we whoops nearly there I'm quite liking that combination got some ribbons as well that's interesting like a little bit of Sparkle anybody watches my Channel knows I like like a bit of shine did that go under there that's quite nice so I think what I'm going to do is cut these down a little bit and see what I've got and cut some pill shapes and then we'll go from there and see if it needs anything else so I probably had just another five minutes to play with this really and just change this around a little bit I've added another lighter color in here this was quite heavy on its own but I brought this in down here just as I mentioned to bring in those Fabrics twice that can just make it nice and cohesive I think the word is so I'm going to pin it all together now this isn't the right size but I'm going to pin it first and then I'm going to cut it all to the right size so just pin through everything that needs pinning basically try not to move it all just pinning through all the layers so everything is held down so as many pins as you need at this stage so it's all held in place just one more in that little bit there so I can sort of pick that up and it's not going to fall apart my pieces aren't going to move so then I'm just going to trim that to size yeah not worrying too much about the edges this is slow stitching we don't need to do fancy edges for slow stitching oh it's still sticking out a little bit so I'll trim a bit more of that off okay I think we are ready to stitch I'm just going to bring this one in this point and just show you these two that I have made now I've got um one set of fabrics that I have used throughout all three of these actually my four of these so I'm going to get some repetition in it but don't worry about copying mine look at what Fabrics you have got how can you layer them how can you shape them a little bit to make a landscape you don't have to put water in it if you don't want to if you live somewhere with a beautiful view over the fields you could do that so I'm just going to show you that one again so we've got that lace under there so the backing fabric my kind of top fabric you could probably dispense with that one really but I do like the nice feel of these and they come out really nice and solid they've got really lovely feel with all these Fabrics layered together so that lace one there I've got some little silk tissue on top of there to make that Sky effect I've got this lace that I've actually cut so I've cut these pieces out that was just a straight line so I've cut those little shapes out so it's a little bit like distant snow-cut mountains little one there as well to give it a bit of shape then this Thai Silk here as I said I moved that one there down to here it looked all a little bit dark across the middle so I just moved that one down put a lighter green one in I've just cut that one in a little bit of a wiggly line as well I've got my water which is straight um water doesn't go up and downhill so put a straight water line in and that'll be really nice feature right across the middle of your landscape it really does look like you're looking out over the water got that beautiful sparkly trimming that has been lying around forever great opportunity to use up those little bits that you think you're saving for a rainy day now is the rainy day use them and then a little bit of that Thai Silk at the front just to give a little bit of foreground so it's all ready to stitch so I'm going to just clear the Fabrics away and we're going to look at some threads so as with the fabric I suggest with slow stitching that this is the opportunity to use up a little left over bits and pieces don't go and buy some nice new threads for this unless of course you want to don't have to do what eyes there you can do what you like but it is a good opportunity to use those little ends up now if anybody's seen my video on how to organize your embroidery stash I'll put a link up to that one as well you will be familiar with this tin this is all my leftover little bits of thread this tin was a bargain because it had a dent in it so it was half price and then I just literally you can see that that will fall out most um this is all the little ends that I can't be bothered to wrap but now I'm not a fan of those little cards um as you may know they're absolutely great if you're organized or you want to wrap them all brilliant can you come and do mine for me please um and I just rather put them in a tin and then I can just have a route around so if you've got an old cross stitch project and it's got some leftover threads um you know you can just bung them in as they are and if I just want a bit of a color I want to do some sampling I want to do a bit of slow stitching I just dive in here and use these because otherwise these are not going to get used anything that's in a whole skein with the label on goes in another drawer and I do keep those organized but these are literally the leftover bits so I have already just had a little look through and pulled out some colors I put them on the top and I've just again picked colors that are similar to the ones I've used on my Fabrics I've got some blues and some greens and some Browns you could use some sparkly threads if you want to in the water um you can bring all sorts into it so I've just picked a few colors out just pick yourself a palette if you like a palette of colors match them to the threads if you want to if to the Fabrics if you want to if you didn't have a color fabric you wanted now is the time to bring that color into it you could put some summer flowers flour Meadow at the front of your scene and you could pick some really beautiful pinks and make yourself some flowers so it really is your choice and there is a million combinations of this by the way you could you could play for hours and make some nice different designs up so just have some fun with it coming up with whatever design you want I think that's enough it is nice to get some of these used so you can see how that sort of palette works with that I've put that really bright greens if I want something to go a bit zingy I might not use half of these I don't know yet but I've got my choices there I don't have to go back and make more choices because now I can just enjoy this process of stitching all these layers together so you can do one of two things at this point you can baste all of these pieces together if you want or you can just go straight in with the pins now I know some people who do slow stitching like to get all these pieces together and fixed together and you can take the pins out and you've got that fabric feel I'm a little bit lazy and I'm just going to go straight in um and just start stitching straight on so you can do whichever one you like and I do just want to mention as well when I was just tidying up a bit Jonathan said oh but you didn't iron you didn't iron your fabric I did Iron them previously I ironed my big part by a big pile of fabric and we are slow stitching we're not worrying about edges and seams and all that sort of thing but I do think you should start with some flat pieces of fabric I do like to iron my Fabric and start with them nice and nice and flat and then you can see what they're going to do if they start all scrunched up you might get something really creative but it might do something really weird as well so I do recommend ironing them before you start stick itching them so let's pick out a thread and get going so I want to get these held down as much as possible so I'm going to stitch across the main element so I think I'm going to stitch straight across this bit first and then probably across the water and then around here and that will sort of hold everything together and then I can work into that so I've just got a white thread here I want cream on or a white one I'll go with the white one this is a stranded cotton you can use any thread you like you can use perlas you can use silks Linens one you want to use this just happens to be so I think that I need to use up so um fingertip to Elbow good length of thread go a little bit longer if you want this low Stitch and we're going to do really simple stitches this is about this process and about enjoying the action of stitching and of creating and not worrying about too much about what your end result is I'm going to just half it and use three strands in it this is quite a small piece six strands I think is going to be a little bit bulky and I'm going to fight the fabric and it's supposed to be nice and relaxing and mindful and I don't want to be fighting my material so I just have that going to use um an embroidery needle number seven click and thread it I'm just going to show you how I'm going to start now I have put a little knot in the end there if you follow me on my um other stitching videos you'll see I'm not a fan of knots we make a waist knot we do some starting stitches and we cut the waist knot off don't like knots on the back but we are slow stitching so I'm not going to worry too much about that we've got enough layers to hide it I've made a nice small knot there so we're just going to hide that knot in the in the layers so I'm going to start this I've got all of these layers which is where these two layers come in handy now and I could just do straighten from the back and it sits on the back um but I'm going to do a halfway house so I'm going to go between so that knot will sit in between the fabric layers so you don't get them on the back if the knot is on the back and it comes undone the idea is it could come undone on the front as well so I'm hiding the knot which gives it less less chance less likely to Come Undone if it's hidden between the layers so there's my knot inside let's just brush that end inside like so and I can just do a little stitch on that and that just holds that in place that's nice and secure the knots hidden inside it's not going to come undone and then I'm just going to start with the simplest of stitches so I'm just going to do a running Stitch go up and down I'm going to follow the line of this piece here and just Stitch all those layers together and when you've done that you can take a pin out so nice small stitches just enjoy how that feels nice to hold it in your hand and not have a frame and feel tight and you get a nice tension when you hold it in your hand you're not pulling on it too tight if you do struggle with your hands by the way if you do have pain in them you can put this in a frame you can do stretcher bars and pin it to some stretcher bars you know it's no point doing if you're not comfortable that's not going to be very mindful at all so do what you need to do to stitch it but I do quite like just holding it in my hand and you can see I've got it resting on the table I just got my hand underneath I'm not kind of or tense when I'm holding it just nice and relaxed I'm just going to stitch along the edge there up and down with my stitches Stitch those together so great um if you don't have loads of stitches in your Bank and you can still make something really beautiful with just a few stitches as well and good to do with grandchildren if you've got grandchildren nice easy Stitch or maybe if you're losing your sight a little bit or some movement in your hands this is a nice one to do there's lots of reasons to do slow stitching it's really good for everybody and I've really enjoyed learning this and doing this has been good for me just to relax a little bit and enjoy the process of it rather than worrying about the end result when I get to a pin I can just take that pin out and the idea is get rid of all the pins and then we've got this nice piece of fabric to work with so I'm just going to stitch all the way to the end I'm going to do um the water as well and then I'll show you another Stitch that you can use if you want to add another one in it's my little landscape is coming together now I have sewn and so I went over the little mountain snowy mountain range there and I've gone along the water as well and do a few little stitches in around here and along the bottom so that's holding that really securely and you can see I've taken the pins out as I've gone along so anything with a pin in it it's still not secured them but I just wanted to show you another Stitch that you can do so if you've got lots of stitches um that you know that you want to use you can put whatever you like in slow Stitch whatever you enjoy stitching I wouldn't use it as a place to learn something new this is supposed to be mindful have a little sampler we've got a video All About sampling and how to do that and why you should all be doing it um practice new stitches on a sampler and stitching slow stitching do something that you already know and just enjoy that actual active stitching I would say but I'm going to just do another very simple Stitch because you might want to make a slightly different effect it's really super simple so it's just going to do some straight sort of satin stitches and I thought with this little bit of land here I would make it look like it's got a bit of grass on it so you kind of got a little bit of depth and it looks like it's over the water and you've got those layers and it's so easy to do so I've just come up inside that fabric there I'm just going to stab down there and just make some little sort of talk to the Cross if you like so I'm doing a kind of little group of them little toughly bits of grass and just stabbing straight down and that will start to hold these Fabrics together as well I will need to put stitches in to hold everything so if the grass doesn't hold down here I'm going to just put another stitch in to hold this together you want it to be nice and secure you don't want it all falling apart so I'm just going to come up in there stab down into that Silk just make these little groups of green graphs just overlapping those Fabrics I love this sparkly one underneath us so happy I used that one and I've still got a little bit left as well for That Rainy Day pump up the rainy day sort of groups of Threes quite nice you don't want them to be uniform though so then you could just jump along a little bit and just put two in don't overthink it I'll try and plan it all then we're not slow stitching we've gone into something else which is perfectly okay but we are doing some slow stitching so just enjoy the act of feeling these threads and fabrics in your fingers it is really nice I do love it it's a it's definitely good for me to do this let's put it along in there that little bit screen a bit too a bit too much and then I'm running out of thread so I'm just going to turn over on the back and we'll have a look at that in a second and show you how I finish it off so that's a play of stitched so far but I'm just going to hide the end of this now this is the great thing about all these layers of fabric now is you can just hide the end so I'm just going to go in between the layers just make sure you don't come out on the front weave it in between a few so that is not going to come undone cut that off so it is nice and sort of neatish on the back we're not worrying about whether it looks the same on the back but I just finish it off securely that thing's Coming Undone and you can just see where I Stitch so there's that mountain bit there there's the water and you don't need to stitch because we've stitched all the layers together I don't need to go along underneath and Stitch that water down and then Stitch this one on top I'm just stitching everything together in one go so I've just got one layer of stitching which is why that blue water stops there because now I'm going to continue with this grass got some green here I'm going to continue around there and that will secure that one I will do something along this one as well because that's the only bit that's not currently held down and then I just have to think about the edges so I'm going to go along here and I might put an interesting I'm still going to do running Stitch but I might do it in a bit of a swirly pattern to make it look a little bit like Sky see when I get there but that needs holding down because there's nothing holding these layers at the moment so I will do the top and then I will just make sure I've done the bottom as well and everything is secure and then we will come back and we will have a look at that so I think I've done all the stitching that I am going to do I've had a very pleasant half an hour just sitting stitching that by myself and so I'm just going to show you quickly what I have done so everything has been sewn down I put some extra stitches along the bottom here they look a little bit light flapping water and we're just taking those up into the this nice sort of braid here just continued the stitches in these are the grass stitches that I showed you earlier um I've just done the running stitches over the hills just to hold those down and I've done a little bit more of a spirally kind of pattern in the sky look a little bit the cloud like and I've gone quite close to the edge I want to get this stitched down at the edge if I can just to make it a little bit more secure I haven't worried about this but it's only short but I have gone down here and along the bottom um just to make sure that's all stitched in nicely enough I just flip it over and show you what the back looks like you can see the stitching a little bit more clearly so there's the water on the bottom these are the hills and there's what I've done in the sky in the mountains so you can do as much stitching as you want you can keep going with this if you want to if you've got other stitches that you know that you want to use you can put in lots of texture you just keep on stitching as much as you want I'm going to stop there sometimes I find if I just carry on it gets a little bit dull and it all neatens out a little bit and I quite like that sort of freshness of it so I'm going to stop there but what I do think is it may need just a little feature little feature piece in it it does look beautiful as a landscape but I found these little things in my crafty stash I've got some little wooden pieces and I thought well maybe they look quite nice on it so I thought I'd try a few so I've got a little mousse here and we did come across a few not real ones with stuffed ones on walls but there were a few of those and I thought he looks quite nice he sort of calling out over the landscape I thought he was quite nice but the other thing that I remember about Norway is it's got thousands of islands literally I think thousands of thousands of little islands and there were lots of dwellings on them and you get a tiny little island and there was a house on it and it was the one who lives there so I've got some little houses they're not very Norwegian but they're quite sort of glitzy and I think they would work so I did think I could put a little house on this and this could be a little island with a Welling on it a little who's living there kind of thing and then I've got these little wooden fur trees so it could be just something like that in the third trees and that just adds a little bit of a feature to it you can put whatever you like on your slow stitching you can put broken jewelry on it we've done that in the past in previous videos you can save buttons on it you can say beads on it you can just go for it whatever you you see that you like if you can stitch over it or through it you can put it on so I think I might put these on it might go a bit cutesy but I'm not worried about that let's just go a bit cutesy just to show you what you can do with it really I'm just going to sew it on I think with a color that will blend in you could do it in Green for the trees and make the feature of it but just for the sake of getting finished so we can get this video up I'm just going to use this color and I'm just going to sew over them so the house has got a little button fastening so I could just go over that a few times and the trees I will just go over the branches to hold those in place so I shall do that and then we'll have a look at that bigger one and just have a talk through how I made that there we go I am calling that finished I think that's quite nice so nice little reminder of our lovely holiday in the Norwegian Fjord so let's just clear this away and have a look at the other one so this is the first piece that I actually did when I came back and I was inspired by the beautiful views and I've actually done this one from a picture so I'll put that up now so this is the photograph that I took and this is more about inspiration for this piece rather than necessarily copying it exactly we're doing slow stitching we're doing an interpretation I mean we're not doing a photographic technique but this was my inspiration of one of the fuels that we stayed in and this is my interpretation of it now first thing you will notice is I've left the ship off I just thought this is about the landscape really the Japan but you could you could put two and so this one's a little bit bigger which gives you an opportunity to do more stitching with it but I have done it in the same way so I've got my backing fabric there that's my Calico cotton backing to stitch through and then I have got a plain piece underneath that or did I just use the backing right so the piece I've got under that is actually this mounting piece of fabric so this was a piece that I made with some friends and we had a little go Indigo dyeing and how to make some different textures and this is the fabric that I am used for this and I thought it's just got real mountain look about it oh that'd be perfect for the mountains but I've made it the same size as the whole thing so that is like my layer to stitch onto that's like my blank canvas if you like so it doesn't have to be plain um it's nice plain if you've got Fabrics that are see-through and you want it to be a bit brighter underneath but I've used this one all the way through so that's my second layer then is a little bit thinner here actually you can feel it it's not quite as dense there and um so I've layered these Fabrics up so I'll put some photographs up of the layering to show you that so this is the first layer um with this dyed fabric this Indigo dyed Fabric and then I've just layered it as I've shown you with the small one as well these um this fabric there's a little bit of lace going in for the sky I've used um the shape of that to inform my sky now and then I've got this water layer this is a nice silk as well and a cotton for the front um piece of land the foreground of it and just some little layers in between um this is a bit of see-through fabric here I just wanted to make the water a little bit darker and just get that sort of feeling of the different um the different depths of the water if you like the different kinds of water and just to make that a bit more interesting it's a bigger design you can do more things like that you can sort of vary your Fabrics a little bit more I've got some layers on top of as well of some organza here so there's this plain silk underneath I just think I've got a piece of that but it's a plain sort of turquoise silk and then just these organzas on the top there's actually three colors there I'm not worried that it's not a long enough piece I can just Stitch over it and hold that down there I've got a little bit of lace as well under here just to sort of kind of signify that there's something on the other side of the waters and the mountains don't just stop there's like a pebbly beach or something like that and being really quite free with my ideas now I'm not worrying about recreating it exactly and then this was the water was kind of lapping this was this little sort of bit of land that went out into the water you could walk out onto this here and just sort of indicate a little bit of water lapping at the edge there and then I made this kind of path here with a little bit of lace and I've embellished this quite a bit so if I just flip that over you can see all the stitching on that so lots of running stitches I love running Stitch just to hold it together it works really really well let your Fabrics kind of do do the bulk of the work if you like um but you can see I've got other kind of stitching going on here as well and you can see the sort of path and the line of the water in the mountains I've done some stitching in the mountains as well so you can see how much stitching I've actually done on that and then I've added in some details of some extra stitches so I put some French knots in here so this was quite pebbly ground to walk on it's sort of the the bed of the fuel I suppose and without any water on it so this is quite pebbly here so I've done some fresh knots here and some straight stitches just to sort of indicate that this path is going across it and then I found this amazing is mailing sort of pearly bees now this was a necklace that broke and they just keep all that sort of thing keep all your broken jewelry lost earrings we've got so many single earrings and you can use them in your slow Stitch and I just thought they were really nice not that the beach not that the front had these great big great big bells on it or anything but to sort of indicate a little bit of a rocky foreground and something at the front more detail at the front will really give you those layers and give you that depth in it and then less detail at the back and that will just makes the Back Fade Away a little bit so just a little a little small detail about how to add some depth into it but otherwise um just lots of lots of stitching lots of straight stitching I've used a variegated thread in the water just for a little bit of Interest try to bring this dark up into here a little bit as well just these small details and as I said before you could decide how far you want to go with it and how much stitching you want to do if you're enjoying it you can just carry on stitching so I hope you've enjoyed that little bit of slow stitching and maybe you're inspired to have a go at your own landscape or some pictures out pull some fabric out have fun playing with the threads and the fabric and see what you can come up with and I mentioned earlier that video 20 things to make with your slow stitching so if you want some other ideas of what you can do with this you can check this video out up here that's got lots of ideas for you if you've enjoyed this video do give it a thumbs up that's always appreciated and I will see you next time

Channel: Sarah Homfray Embroidery

Views: 33,923

Keywords: hand embroidery, how to embroider, how to do embroidery, sarah homfray, how to do needlepoint, hand embroidery tutorial, slow stitching tutorial, slow stitching projects, slow stitching for beginners

Id: Vj_sK21jtvk

Length: 47min 20sec (2840 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023