Make your Grass Real (and) Easy

‘Let the fabric do the work for you' has never been more true than when you’re trying to make grass in your fabric landscape. Don’t waste time by using fabric with blades of grass all over it. It will take a LOT of stitching to make the foreground blades biggest, and to blot out the midground and/or background.

Look closely at this picture.

The foreground shows individual blades of grass but the midground just shows blobs of color which we know are made up of individual blades-without seeing them individually.

So why not use a blotchy green fabric behind the pup-making sure that the blotches are non-directional or horizontal, not vertical? Midground done!

For the foreground, use a dark value green fabric as your base. It will seem too dark at first, but will provide the perfect base for your stitches. Do stitches in small areas (blobs) of light, medium and dark values depending where you want shadows and highlights in the grass. Start at the back area of your foreground grass with your shortest stitches and make them slightly taller as you move forward. This will cover the spot where the midground and foreground fabrics meet. (Easiest for me is to use a 1.8 free motion zigzag. I turn the picture sideways and pull it slightly, side to side, as I stitch to vary the size of the stitches.)

I notice that blades in front seem to have a very light value at their tips. How about tightening your top thread tension so that a white bobbin thread pulls to the top and makes the sunlit blade tops very bright? If you want a tutorial on how to stitch grass, I do have it in my store, Stitch Magic Part 1.

Have you joined our private FB group yet? If you've ever taken a class from me you should. It's called Bonnie and Fabric Friends and you just need to answer 3 easy questions so I can get to know you. We are interested in realistic fabric landscapes (and maybe some other cool stuff) and love to learn from one another. No negative comments are allowed. We haven't had any posts with show and tell or technique ideas, or questions about a piece of work, so maybe you can be the first! We'd love to have you with us.

See you over in the private group!