Skies in Needlepoint

Please note: My internet was down almost all day yesterday, so I am rerunning this past post. Use the ear5ch box or the categories to find lots of great & useful content!

If you thought about it, you’d be surprised how often skies appear in needlepoint.

And, at least to me, they are always challenging to stitch. I’ve tried several different approaches.

1. Using a patterned stitch. I like Nobuko for this and have used it for skies in many pieces, including the SF Heart. I also have used it for a Sundance mission and for one of Amanda Lawford’s Russian villages (stitch guide available from me soon)

2. Use a hand-dyed thread and a simple darning pattern. I love the open look of this sky. By changing the color you can get a brilliant or overcast sky. Because it’s a flatter stitch than Basketweave the sky looks farther away. This sky is from a piece available from me of a Napa Valley landscape.

3. Use contrasting textures in thread to make a patterned sky, I used this approach in the Cat’s Cradle piece (stitch guide available).

4. Anne Stradal’s post this week reminded me of another method of doing skies which I love. This works especially well if the sky is the main background for a piece. Use needle-blending to make a sky which changes in shade or color, the way a real sky does. She shows a non-blended, a blended, and a blended with a textured stitch background on three different lighthouses. She also has used this same technique for the sky in the ducks piece pictured above (stitch guide available) I just love them.

If you need a sky that changes color, such as a sunset (like the Botswana angel pictured above or a wide Western sky, this is the perfect technique to use.

You need avoid skies no longer.

Now I’m going to take a break and work on the skies for the SF heart and the angel!