Les Matelles- Stitchery

I have been working on a small stitched piece ( A4 size) of a scene in the small medieval village Les Matelles which was the next village  to Le Triadou where I lived in 2010( I miss the south of France...) It's a lovely village with stone houses and stone stairways and with loads of shades of grey. I had toyed around with the image previously, trying to draw it in the hope of making a linocut but in the end the nuances of shade/light and grey were too varied to reduce it to a  drawing suitable for a linocut. Then last year when I worked with Solufix, I thought yep that is the solution- I will stitch the image with solufix and see what happens. I did not print off the original photos as I knew I  did not have the silvery green/grey threads for the olive tree- so  I used a bit of poetic licence in the interpretation of that tree. I am also amazed at how many shades of grey thread I used- thank you Mettler for your silk finish cottons they are just perfect for this kind of job!

 The top photo is the original photo which I cropped a little as the top left corner was a bit over exposed and below is my stitched interpretation made with the aid of Solufix. I am  preparing classes to work with this material and will be teaching  with it at best of Quilting at Marcoussis ( France) late in April.

And I have been walking again- one of my neighbours whom I met at the bus stop and who  is also an artist and sometime quilter and I go for a big long walk once a week ( although I walk other mornings as well)- this morning we walked along the foreshore where they were gearing up for the Festival of Sails- I love the textures of the ropes to tie up the boats.