Tuscan Landscape

Back last October I holidayed in Tuscany with my family. I found the landscape there fascinating – rolling hills covered in vines, trees, and crop fields, and it inspired me to try and do something to recreate it in textiles. Being a bit of a trigger-happy photo obsessive, I took lots of pictures of the landscape, including this one from a high vantage point in San Gimignano.

Returning to the UK I did some drawings based on my various photos and mused on a number of different ways of realising it, including needlepoint (too flat), canvaswork (too boring) and felt (a possibility, especially with stitching on top). However, around that time I read Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn’s book ‘Over the Line’ on couching, and that was suddenly the obvious technique for realising the rows of vines and ploughed lines

The Hockney exhibition at the V&A earlier this year also provided inspiration. His work is full of rolling fields – this time in Yorkshire – but his wonderful use of colour encouraged me to be a little bolder than I usually am and so I branched out into turquoises and yellows as well as browns and greens.

The sky was a bit trickier as I didn't want the same tramlines but did want a nice sweeping open feeling. I thought the saeme sort of approach as Van Gogh's starry night might work with white and pale blues but it looked very washed out, so I unpicked that amd just used a single dark blue couched so close you can't see the supporting strand of wool. I couched over the couching to give a feel of whispy clouds.

The end result is much lusher looking than the original photo but I think I prefer it. Now I just need to mount it :-)

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