Narnia in depth

Pat Bootland is a great fan of the Narnia books and in this piece she wanted to create in stitch the scene at the beginning of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe….

Narnia stitchery

First of all she took the inside ring of an embroidery hoop and wound white fabric around it to create a frame:

Narnia Stitchery 2

You can see this frame under the top layer of organza.

To create the background she decided to use the same technique as that to make a dorset button but on a larger scale. So she used needle weaving to create the two large pine trees in the background and to attach them to the frame:

Detail of Narnia stitchery

Next she embroidered the small pine trees on to some white fabric and attached them to the back of the frame behind the large trees. This gives depth and perspective to the scene.

To evoke the atmosphere of the street lamp on a snowy night she embroidered the lamp post onto a piece of organza and added tiny dot and linear stitches to give the sense of snow flakes drifting in the cold air:

Detail 2 of Narnia stitchery

If you look closely at this photo and the previous ones you can see that the layer of embroidered organza also creates a shadow which just adds more perspective and authenticity to the scene.

Then Pat came up with a very cool (no pun intended!) trick for a more complex and subtle spatial dimension – she added some textured threads to suggest a foreground with snow on the ground:

The final step was to attach the organza to the front of the frame and add cord around the outside of the frame to finish the piece neatly.

Carmen.

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