Covered in Stitches Entry #2

(Yup, I managed a #2!  If you didn’t see it, entry #1 is blogged here.  You can also see both my actual entries on the Covered In Stitches Flickr page, along with the other brilliant entries.)

This time I chose the book The Knife of Never Letting Go, which is Book One in the Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness.  The result:

This book is set in a world where everyone can hear all the thoughts of the men around them; it’s called “Noise”, nothing is private as a result.  Todd is the last boy in Prentisstown; shortly before the birthday that will make him a man, he becomes aware that trouble is heading his way, and he is forced to leave home immediately in fear for his life.

I decided to take these elements and depict the image of Todd, his friend Viola and his faithful dog Manchee (and what a dog- probably my favourite dog ever in fiction) escaping from Prentisstown by the light of the New Worlds two moons, and surrounded by the ever-present Noise of the inhabitants of the town.

Some details:

I hand embroidered everything except the Noise in the background (this is machine embroidered). The two moons have a swirly pattern and have 4 different coloured threads.

I used my sewing machine to free-embroider words in a script-like font on the velvet background; this is to represent Noise.

I prefer this cover to the one I made for Kavalier and Clay.  I think the colours may have something to do with it; the colours I used for K&C (which I chose oh so carefully) are all too same-y…  this is possibly why I’m not happy with it.  The colours here really make the image pop more.  I’ll say one thing- making these two covers has really made me rethink a project that’s currently in the planning stage.  The embroidery of the two moons took me HOURS and HOURS to do, more than double how long I estimated.  There must be a gajillion stitches there (real number, I swear, google it…), and the project I have in mind is very stitch-heavy.  I had figured on it taking a few months, but I may have to revise that to a…gulp…few…years, eek!  Hmmm.  Decisions to be made.

Another Noise view

Todd, Viola and Manchee in the light of the moon

Oh by the way, you must read the Chaos Walking Trilogy.  READ IT!  You won’t regret it.  And that is all.