Colours of New Zealand picture

I finished the Colours of New Zealand cq picture and I blogging it just so I have a record of how it turned out and also to compare it to my previous two "Colours of......." pictures.  There is a lot of background texture in this picture that doesn't show in the front.  For instance, the lake beneath the mountains is a piece of silk fabric which has been smocked on the back to create the ridges. Once it was sewn in place, I stitched rows of beads between the grooves. The snow on the mountains was a piece of very sparkly stretch open-weave material which was ironed onto a stabilizing fabric before being cut out and appliqued onto the grey satin mountains with blanket stitch worked in a similar coloured sparkly thread. And the fields on the left were small pieces of various green and yellow materials machine sewn into a patchwork of squares before being sewn to the backing.  The Kiwi was a piece of patchwork material with the Kiwis already included. I used two strands of embroidery floss and stitched over the top of the existing bird then went over the top with a single strand to make it more fluffy. I used the colours that were already printed on the fabric to create the shading.

The lady who ordered this picture was from Christchurch, New Zealand. She asked for mountains and sea, River Avon, lambs, the Christchurch Cathedral (now gone since the earthquake), Hydrageas, a Kiwi, a Tiki and she sent me a photo of the first house that they lived in which I printed out on fabric and embellished. The red flowers represent the New Zealand Christmas Tree.

 

When my friend saw the Sardinia picture, she commented "I wonder what the Colours of Widnes would be - dirty old town!". That was like red rag to a bull and I had to show her what my impression of the "Colours of Widnes", which is an industrial town in Lancashire, England, would be. Unknowingly, I included the bridge that her grandfather worked on and the Widnes Railway Station which was where her father worked. I love this picture, so dull and grey and yet so interesting.

And here is the original "Colours of Sardinia" picture which I made for a friend from work and his wife as a house-warming present. It doesn't matter that they'd been in the house by the time I finished the picture, they loved it, especially Anna who said that it completely captured the beautiful colours of their homeland, Sardinia, Italy. It was from this that the Widnes picture evolved and eventually the NZ picture.