From My Sister's Window by Sheila Ary

I worked this piece in my first Machine Embroidery class, and am quite amazed with what I accomplished. My sister’s kitchen window looks out over a small, paved area to a red brick wall which has a bush scrambling over it. Working from a photograph I stitched to brick wall in layers, using several shades of red on my ground fabric. However, this became too thick to stitch anything more onto, so I worked the cement layers between the the bricks on dissolvable fabric, using a light gray thread in the needle and dark green thread in the bobbin so that the colors would blend. Fortunately the green thread bled into the gray, giving me an even better result than I could have planned for. After rinsing out the dissolvable fabric I was left with a network, which I stitched into place on the wall using a gray thread where it would not be seen. I limited the bush to what I could reasonably do on dissolvable fabric, using two shades of green, and working the two branches separately. The stem of the back branch is made sturdy by stitching about eight rows of satin stitch, and is attached in only a few places, allowing it to rise a little above the wall. The forward branch is stiffened with wire, and is attached only at the base.