Stitched Tree for ARCHITEXTURE

Stitched Trees

 
Over the last few months, I've been stitching trees.  As a member of York Embroiderers & Stitchers, who are a friendly group of stitch and textile enthusiasts of all levels of ability and experience, I am preparing for our ARCHITEXTURE exhibition later this year (27-29 June 2025 - save the date!).  As you can imagine from the exhibition title, there will be traditional and contemporary textile art on a theme of architecture alongside other 2D and 3D pieces. And some of those 3D pieces will be buildings, so I thought they might need a bit of greenery to go with them. ARCHITEXTURE is being held at the Tithe Barn in Nether Poppleton, York, YO26 6LF.  More details here.

Boro inspired trees - front

I made some tree canopy patterns of varying sizes and then cut out the tree shapes.  The fabric I used was dyed calico and backed with some iron-on vilene to stabilise the fabric for embroidery.  On the front I added some scraps of fabric in a boro patched style and then stitched them on using a variety of different stitches - running stitch, cross stitch, fly stitch, star stitch, seed stitch.  I used different types and weights of thread.  On the back of all of them I just used a running stitch, kantha style.

Boro inspired trees - back

The second set of trees I made began in the same way but on the front I did a stitch that was like an irregular darn...

"Darned" trees - front

On the back of these trees I chose a particular stitch and filled the space, sometimes varying the size of stitch and sometimes not...

"Darned" trees - back

I machine stitched the fronts to the backs although you could handstitch them, then stuffed them will toy filling, added a trunk and potted them with some yarn for soil.  

Do come along to our ARCHITEXTURE exhibition to see  all the YES members' fabulous work.

Another Brick in The Wall

My Stitched Brick

I'm a member of York Embroiderers & Stitchers, who are a friendly group of stitch and textile enthusiasts of all levels of ability and experience. Later this year we will be holding our ARCHITEXTURE exhibition at the Tithe Barn in Nether Poppleton, York, YO26 6LF from 27-29 June 2025 (save the date!). As you can imagine from the exhibition title, there will be traditional and contemporary textile art on a theme of architecture alongside other 2D and 3D pieces. More details here.

  

Nicky's dyed fabrics ready to be stitched into bricks

As part of that exhibition members are stitching "bricks" which will be constructed into "The Wall" for the exhibition. Each "brick" represents whatever gives the person who made it, strength and stability and together represents the group's values of friendship, diversity and support. The fabric the bricks are made from was dyed by our chair, Nicky Brunger, so that the colours would be harmonious.

Stitched brick - work in progress

Of course to make a wall all our bricks have to be the same size and orientation so the finished brick must measure 8 inches by 4 inches, be in a landscape orientation with a 0.5 inch border without stitching. The stitched area was therefore 7 inches by 3 inches.  

Stitched brick - work in progress

At first I marked the area to be stitched with pins but soon realised some tacking stitches would work better!

Stitched brick - work in progress

I used a variety of stitches such as french knots, detached chain stitch (lazy daisy), ordinary chain stitch, straight stitch, back stitch, star stitch, using colourful threads and yarns in a variety of sizes.

Stitched brick - work in progress

I should say that before I started stitching I had ironed on some stabiliser to provide a better base for stitching (also provided by YES). You can see that the back is quite chaotic!  

I then added some calico to the back, stitched it together with right sides facing and left a gap to turn it through and then handsewed the gap.  And here is the finished stitched brick ready to be added to The Wall...

Finished Piece

My brick is covered in stylised flowers and represents a colourful, joyful world from which I get my strength and stability.

I'm looking forward to seeing the finished wall. I hope you'll come along to ARCHITEXTURE to see it too!