Nice Matters....and the Landscape is Sewn Down

I am loving how this blogging award has encouraged us to celebrate our online friendships! Thank you so much to Susan, Pat, Annie, and Debra for thinking of me...I send it straight back to you, and with love. There are millions of blogs out there...it is kind of like a universe of stars, but all of my blogging friends make up my home galaxy.
This morning in particular I would like to send this award out to my two Judys...well, one is really a Judith....Judy Harper is my friend in Austin who loves crazy quilting and is transforming the possibilities of needlepoint with her c.q. experiments and designs...we have so much fun writing to each other about all kinds of things, and I so appreciate her perspective and humor and support...
Judith in England is fairly new to crazy quilting (but is a natural) and is also a fabulous gardener...her gardening blog is here, and I am an constant reader! How I wish I could go with her on one of those long walks through the English countryside that she describes so well....
Thank you all who take the time to comment on my entries so that I know you are there...and for those of you who don't, I am glad you are there, too!

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So on we go to the landscape project. It is all sewn down now...so the 3-D effect that some of you commented on is quite gone. Now it is up to the use of perspective to make my landscape have depth. My uncle was really good at that in his cottage paintings; he has done most of the work for me.

Here is the little landscape under the machine needle. I switched my sewing table around into the corner, and what a difference it makes! I should have thought of this years ago.

The basic ingredients....size 60 Microtex needles (to keep hole size in the printed silk to a minimum), clear smoke monofilament thread, and the 505 Spray and Fix for spot tweaking while sewing. Also, I forgot to mention that I had interfaced the muslin foundation before I laid out the landscape. That helped the zigzag go very smoothly.

Here it is from the back....

...and from the front. Marty asked about the cottages....I scanned a photocopy of my uncle's painting, then used that jpeg to print onto the silk satin that I ran through my little home Epson printer. Pretty simple...now that I know to up the saturation levels in both the jpeg and the printer settings.

I am quite happy with how this is going! Now comes the hand embroidery, where I will have to be keenly aware of the scale of the elements I add. This whole thing is about tricking the eye with visual cues, so I don't want to break the spell...