Roofs and Domes

I stitched this for an American Needlepoint Guild Charity Auction. I have no information about the designer of this canvas, it came with no stitch guide, no instructions of any kind. I don't actually remember choosing this, so I'm going to blame it on Jane-Beth or one of our American stitching friends. I'm sure it was thrust into my hand with a comment along the lines of "see what you can do with that, clever-clogs".

What could I do with it?
It was a painted canvas, so the colours, roughly, were already set. I could have worked the whole thing in basketweave, letting the colours do the work of showing the design, but though that would have been much quicker, it would have been much less interesting. Instead, I decided that I wanted to throw stitches at it to give each building its own texture.

I can't claim to be well travelled, but I've been about a bit and I've noticed that not only do buildings in different countries and regions have different shapes, they have their own local textures. (Even modern concrete and glass has a different feel in different countries.) The buildings on this canvas looked as though they came from different places so, in my mind, they cried out 'Texturise me!'

I used a different stitch or variation for every building and roof, but used a Kreinik gold somewhere in every building to unify the whole. Looking back through my notes, I used Basketweave, Diagonal Brick, Lattice, Satin Stitch, Milanese, Brick, and Jaquard Stitch. The threads were Anchor and DMC, both floss and perle.
Because each area was quite small, I never reached the 'hate' stage on this piece, though as usual I did have to struggle with compensation in some places.

It took me 86 hours to stitch Roofs and Domes.