Blue Sky Dreaming by Helen M. Stevens

'I must go down to the sea again,' wrote John Masefield in 1902, 'to the gull's way and the whale's way...'

Helen M. Stevens knows that pull. 'The longing to be where the sky meets the ocean and dreams are possible,' she reflects. 'That place where the bird calls always sound different; even the plants look slightly alien and, if we are fortunate, we may get a glimpse of the whale's way.'

It is the perfect preamble to Blue Sky Dreaming - a coastal scene so alive with salt air and sea light that you can almost hear the birds calling from the page.It is the perfect preamble to Blue Sky Dreaming - a coastal scene so alive with salt air and sea light that you can almost hear the birds calling from the page.

Published in The Handpicked Collection 6, this beautiful silk embroidered seascape brings together everything that makes a coastline so compelling: the birds, the botanicals, and the wide blue sweep of the sea between headlands.

Two little birds - officially called terns or Sternula albifons, one of the smallest and most agile of their species - wheel and hover above a foreground crowded with sea holly (Eryngium maritimum), its prickle-edged leaves and spherical flower heads as striking and sculptural as anything Helen has ever stitched.

What makes this piece so satisfying is the way Helen holds two different worlds in balance.

The foreground tern is rendered with extraordinary precision — each feather considered individually, shadow lines laid down first in black silk, every quill and wing tip built up in meticulous sequence using Pipers Silks silk floss, Anchor and DMC stranded cotton.

The background tern, by contrast, is deliberately impressionistic.

A suggestion of flight, captured in as few stitches as possible. Together, they give the piece its sense of air and movement.

The finished design measures 25.5cm × 19cm wide (10" × 7½") and is worked entirely with a no. 10 crewel needle on a slate or roller frame onto fine ivory polycotton.

Ready-to-Stitch kits for Blue Sky Dreaming are now available to purchase using the link below and include all the materials you need to recreate this captivating coastal scene - with the design pre-printed onto the fabric for your convenience.