The tapestry that is to be my major work is 'The Ferry', which is based on the painting by E. Phillips Fox from 1910, and exhibited for the first time in 1913 in Australia. I gave a bit of background about it in my first post on this project and there's a link below if you're interested. The painting is a scene from Trouville in Normandy. I was curious to see what Trouville looked like and naturally Google images and Wikipedia were most helpful. This photo is from Wikipedia's Trouville page. In the painting, the ladies are standing on some steps, about to embark into a small boat for a journey. They are beautifully dressed and it seems they are going to a party.
In the photo below, I think you may even be able to see the steps that the ladies are standing on - or so it seems to my imagination.
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I also found a charming travel article that focuses on the literary and artistic scene that Trouville can claim as its heritage - Monet, Flaubert, Proust, Boudin, Duras and though not mentioned, of course our own E.Phillips Fox. The article is here> Impressions of Monet's Beach at Trouville - Guardian, Travel article written in 2008.
I find it hard to photograph this tapestry of mine. It is reasonably long and so I've made an attempt to show you the project in one go, but also in segments. On the right hand side of this tapestry, in the photo below, I've marked off evenly spaced parts of the tapestry. I divided it into 10 equal parts, and have thus set myself goals to finish each part over a year. In September each year, I gather with about twenty women to spend a weekend working on our tapestries. I started this tapestry last September at our weekend workshop and was hoping to have my first year's work stitched down to the mark - I'm not quite there. I do still have a week before I'll be catching up with them, and possibly if I give it a big push I can get fairly close to my goal.
I'm using a standard continental stitch in wool for the steps leading down to the boat. For the water, I'm using a reverse continental stitch in soft cotton, plus a fine oblique slav in DMC, and a horizontal half continental in perle 5. There are about nine colours in the water: grey, green, khaki, yellow, gold, orange, light blue, dark blue, and brown. It was one of the things that appealed to me, the painterly strokes of rippling water. To get the effect of movement the fine oblique slav and the reversing seem to create reflections and ripples.
The umbrella is being stitched in vertical half continental using DMC and in five different colours. I know my technique from Dominique Siegler-Lathrop's book makes it look messy while it is a work in progress, but I do find it reasonably effective for ensuring no stitches are missed.
The fine oblique slav needs to be worked from the bottom to the top and so doesn't mesh very well with the continuous backwards and forwards of the Siegler-Lathrop method. You can see in the photo below that I've laid in the oblique slav stitches first and then I'm filling in the blanks. I think for my weekend away with the tapestry group, I'll just concentrate in putting in as much fine oblique slav as possible.
I'll try and give an update after the weekend to show my progress.
Previous Posts
The Ferry - E.Phillips Fox - Baxtergraphix Tapestry