Aurora Borealis

Do you know, in 2018 I went all the way to Iceland to see the Northern Lights - and they were rubbish! A white, barely there, mist in the sky, and a brush of green on the camera was all I came home with (obviously the holiday itself was amazing and I would love to go back, but the lights themselves were a disappointment). 

Last night (as I wrote this), I walked out of my back door at about 10pm, and was greeted with this fantastic display of bright pink in the sky! Which was actually visible to the naked eye too!! Not perhaps quite this level of pinkness, but there were definitely moving streaks of clear pink dancing around up there. I had gone outside by myself but immediately raced back inside, dragging Mr DT from his cosy spot snuggled up in bed, shoving his arms into his dressing gown and insisting he come outside with me. He wasn't quite as impressed as me (or at least pretended not to be) and didn't stay out in the cold as long, although that may have been because he didn't have shoes on and it was nippy. I even rang The Mother and got her outside her house as well!

I love the stars in these photos, they look like sprinkled fairy dust. Apparently there were quite a few shooting stars seen but I didn't see any. we are vaguely on the flight path to Gatwick airport so we did have a lot of aeroplanes circling in the distance which was quite cool through the pink haze. 

Isn't it amazing? And isn't technology amazing to be able to just snap these photos on a phone without having to change any settings at all. If they come back again I'm going to investigate what I need to do on my camera to get even clearer photos. This aurora was pink and purple, which is apparently down to nitrogen particles interacting with incoming particles. The green aurora I saw in Iceland was oxygen particles and is the more common colour to see so this is very exciting and utterly beautiful!! 

I was feeling very inspired by it the following morning and set to making my own version of the pink aurora - not that I need another project but this can be my bus project when I've finished the current one, and the Stitchscape Swap hoop I've not started yet! It was a landscape scene that needed to be immediately translated into fabric, even if the stitches don't come for a little while! 

Nether Wallop Stitchscape

 

I don't like to abandon Stitchscapes. There's just something about them that makes me want to keep going and trying different things on it until I think they work. This hoop started out as the first draft for the Harvest Sun Stitchscape kit but quite quickly I decided that there were things about it I wasn't happy with - and I only put forward hoops I really love as kits. 

The bits that I wasn't loving was the double use of the green abstract floral pattern (I was initially thinking that I'd try and show how you could do different techniques on them to change up the pattern) and the rows of fly stitch on the wheat field - plus the way that colour kind of stood out on its own without much balancing going on.  The fly stitch rows weren't even enough and I was struggling to make the stitch ends meet like I wanted so, if I was not happy with how I'd done a layer, then I can't ask complete stitching beginners to try the same thing!

The hoop was set aside and, as you'll see if you click on the Harvest Sun blog post here, I ended up adding in several more fabrics, increasing the layers but also balancing them better. The only thing I lost by adding in more fabrics was the space that this initial hoop had for the sun and sun rays. 

The half finished hoop sat all forlorn for several months, until I needed a new bus project and picked it up again. There is a lot less pressure when I'm stitching a hoop just for myself and I can use up odds and ends of threads without writing down the colour, or blur and blend more colours together at will. 

The sun body had already been stitched as part of the kit but I hadn't done the rays and I actually completed that part last, although I'll talk about it first I suppose. There are at least four colours used in the sun rays, mixing up one or two strands and changing the length of the stitches. I was using up some yellows I had, as well as trying to bring in yellows from other areas of the hoop - so that kind of dark golden yellow in the wheat field to help balance that a bit more. I've also added in straight stitches in a single strand of metallic gold just because it's so pretty! I haven't done that in the final Harvest Sun kit but I'm fairly sure that I've advised to go back to the sun once the rest of the layers have been stitched and add in more yellows to build it up, so if you happen to have some gold thread, by all means add that in to yours too. 

The rays ended up almost completely covering the blue fabric layer in the end so I needn't have bothered stitching it really, but it was covered with rows of single strand running stitch which you can kind of see peeking through. The lines followed the edges of the sun and the green mountains below so it had lots of swirly bits which looked like wind whooshing past. 

The left green mountain is a linen texture print so has subtle lines to look like a fabric weave in and I've accentuated these with single strand cross hatched straight stitches, working both directions at once so they interlock together. The fabric is edged with that gorgeous tiny tiny ric rac and I've stitched over it (couched) between the 'v' shapes with one direction one colour and the other direction in another colour. The thread colours are the same as those used in the fabric layer so the darker colour is the straight stitches and the lighter colour is also the french knots I've scattered across the top. (This part was for the kit so I'm limiting my colours used here.)

I very rarely plan my Stitchscapes - even for kits - and just try to see where the fabrics take me. It isn't always immediate and in this case one of the niggling feelings that this wasn't going to completely work as a kit was that I couldn't finish layers. I could fill them in with a stitch but didn't know how I was going to edge them, or vice versa. The big mountain on the right hand side I'd filled in with the straight stitches worked within the petal shadows in the pattern, but I hadn't edge it or finished it much further than that. After some thought, I added single strand running stitch around those flower shapes, used a lovely soft yarn that I happily discovered in a forgotten wool basket around the time I was working on the hoop to be the couched on edge, and popped little french knots into the centre of each flower. 

The next green layer down is the same fabric, and I was initially going to be very different in my stitching approach, but I found myself stitching the same technique but in a more matching colour to the fabric, and in two strands to make the stitches heavier. I think I could have approached this more differently and I'm not quite sure what my fingers were thinking but I've rolled with it. Alternative options would be to cover it with seed stitches and ignore the pattern, you could also then work vertical whip stitch over the seed stitches. Or I could not have done running stitch on the layer above and done rows of those instead. Anyhow, it is done and I didn't want to undo it so I've edged it with bullion knots and left it alone. 

Please don't look too closely at my wheat field. The stitching really is very bad. It started out beautifully on the right hand side with the wider area, curving the line to follow the shape of the hoop, but the more rows I worked, the more it all kind of fell apart - if I had drawn it out first it would have been a lot better but I was free-handing it and wasn't careful enough with my spacing. The narrowing shape and the curve also didn't help but I persevered, covered my raggedy fabric edge with french knots in the same colour and added two twist french knots in red to be my poppies. 

For my lovely little floral ditsy print on green, I've worked whipped back stitch along the long winding stems, a single straight stitch in each leaf and then straight stitches in the daisy petals and a big yellow french knot in the centre. The two green threads I've used were also then put together and couched along the edging to finish the layer. 

The bottom daisy layer I don't like as much as my second attempt I don't think. I've used two strands of stranded cotton and alternated the daisies to either be white or pale blue (to balance the sky), making detached chain stitches over the pattern of the petals themselves. Where I've got the really tiny daisies, I used a silvery blue colour to fill in the petals with a couple of straight stitches - not quite enough to be a satin stitch - so they looked a bit more bud-like. The yellow french knot centres are also a slightly different yellow, lighter yellow on the blue and darker on white. 

Around those I've taken more of the fluffy yarn I found to edge that top mountain, folded it and stitched it into grassy clumps, then added pistil stitches over the top to tame the wildness somewhat. Dark green tapestry yarn was added at the bottom in chunky french knots to give it more of a ground surface, and then beads added to help balance the slight sparkle of the metallic sun. 

My total stitch run down for this Harvest Sun reject - now called Nether Wallop because I really like that village name! - is; bullion knots, straight stitch, running stitch, seed stitch, french knots, couching, fly stitch, whipped back stitch, pistil stitch, detached chain stitch and beading.

So I'd love to know if you agreed with my stopping and starting again. Are there parts of the first version that you prefer over the second?

If I were to do a third version (which is unlikely), I would probably change the shape of the second mountain so that I could have more of a sun showing as I do like the rays and the big sun on the first design. I do prefer the colour balancing and layering on the second though, and the thread on the daisies is much brighter with the coton a broder thread and beads. 

Made & Making Non-Autumn

It feels like ages since I was last at Made & Making! I think I was last here in April time working on seascapes and 'general' creative Stitchscapes where anything goes. It's such a lovely place to come to and I always feel a little thrill and sense of privilege at being trusted with all of the codes to get in and having the studio all to myself! Of course it's also a little scary too as, as was the case on Saturday, I can be the only tutor there all day so it's up to me to let myself in and get the lights and radio on, then it's also up to me to wash up, sweep the floors, turn everything off and lock up again! 

It was a nice compact class with six ladies in (come on gentlemen, where are you all? You can embroider too you know!), again with mixed skill levels and a mix of ages this time too which was fun. We were meant to be doing autumn themed Stitchscapes and I was expecting lots of trees, but actually things took a turn and we ended up with barely any trees at all - and the colours don't look overly autumnal but I suppose even at the beginning stages of autumn the colours may not have yet turned. 

I love the bold colours of the sunset in the above hoop. Her final vision is to turn that semi circle of dark grey felt into a shadowed tree silhouette and have embroidered leaves coming down over her piece, pushing those bright colours to the back which will be really bold and interesting. We chatted about using long lines of wavy fly stitches (which would have to be worked upside down in this case) and alternating between black and grey colour threads for the different fronds to give an element of light and dark - especially as the darkest felt I had with me was the charcoal grey so to have only black leaves might seem a little strange. 

She had come with her daughter who is currently studying textiles at secondary school and who created the hoop above. Both of them left a little early as they had reached a good stopping point so I didn't manage to grab a photo of what they'd achieved by the end - these images are both from the halfway, lunchtime stop. 

I can tell you that the daughter's hoop ended up with embroidered rain in it which was really cool! I'm not entirely sure that she enjoyed herself as much as she thought she was going to. It's a funny one; I also studied textiles at school, college and university and 'textiles' is not the same as hand embroidery. I think she had assumed that it would all happen for her and be amazing but then she struggled a little with some french knots worked up right near to the hoop and after that she almost lost a bit of her oomph and became slightly nonchalant. 

Actually, what she created was absolutely fab. No one has stitched raindrops into a Stitchscape before to my knowledge and it looked brilliant! Her confidence had been a bit knocked though and we couldn't bring it back to what it had been sadly. I really hope that she carries on with her hoop at home and makes it so that she is pleased with it, rather than being worried about what others think (not that that is easy to do for a teenage girl, I've been there!). 

We had lots of fun with trimmings in this workshop though. I had stocked up with some more unusual ones from the-stitchery in Lewes and there were narrow decorative ribbons, wonky ric racs, rosebud ric racs, mini pom poms, waxed cotton cords and all sorts of things. The rosebud ric rac was really popular and also exactly the right colours to fit in with the chosen fabrics so I'm pleased I grabbed some of that (I kept a little bit of the blue/green colour for myself too). Look how beautifully it goes with the blue brushed cotton in the hoop below, and the floral ditsy in the hoop beneath that, then the navy and burgundy version with the colours of the fabrics in the hoop below that!

The lovely lady who stitched the hoop above was called Liz, and she remarked to me what an amazing difference the embroidery does actually make to the fabrics. Her plain green fabric behind her trees is just that, boring and plain (but a lovely olive colour), but now that she's started to add seed stitch to it and those gorgeous little french knots, it's turned it into a whole other world! The seed stitches cast little shadows and dimples, even though they've been colour matched so they don't stand out in a shouty way. It just gives it life!

The hoop below was inspired by an offcut of a dress that Rebecca brought in with her. It looks like a hem that's been cut off so the fabric itself is folded which was good because it's a fairly thin devoré so where there isn't the velvet pattern, it's much more see through and needed that extra thickness. The colours are lovely though and we've picked out the yellow tones of the leaves with the yellow ditsy floral, but then if you move the velvet fabric, where it catches the light there are other purpley/mauve colours which have gone into the sky. Each time you move the hoop the colours slightly change which is beautiful. The cream lace helps to balance everything with the white background of the top leaf print fabric and the white in the daisies at the bottom. 

The lady who created the hoop below, Paula, was very interesting to talk to. She currently has some extra time on her hands and has been doing all sorts of different creative courses which sound wonderful; screen printing, watercolour painting, textile art in various forms. She is waiting for a legal leases and other bits to complete on a gallery space that she is opening up in Brighton, Kemp Town, which will be called Pretty Neat Gallery, selling seconds, misprints and imperfect artist prints or makes which they wouldn't otherwise sell as 'best'. Sometimes accidents make the best pieces because they can come with stories, be totally unique or be the spark of inspiration for a follow up piece.

For her Stitchscape she was using the felts to create different textures and depths, contrasting them against her cotton fabrics which is lovely. I like how she has left so much calico at the top for the sky as well. Shine out bright calico!

So, these hoops may not be the autumn hoops I'd thought we'd end up with at the end of the day, but they sure are pretty, and unique to everyone.

September Shipwrecked ATCs

Oo I love this part of the Stitchscape Swap! I think it's my favourite bit actually, where I can pull out all of the cards that have been arriving on the doormat, getting quickly checked over and stashed away safely until everyone's has arrived and it's time! Time to get them out and arrange them and play with them in different orders, really examine how they've been made and what has been used, how the stitches are created and with what. Eee so exciting! 

Arlo gets excited too, mainly because he likes to be interested in what I'm interested in. I'm not sure how much he really appreciates the cards, but he does love threads and fabric scraps and other bits so perhaps if he had opposable thumbs he'd be creating with me too. 

Look how gorgeous these are! Beautiful colours, lots of blues and greens and muted yellows which work perfectly together. Different greys and browns in rock or driftwood colours, startling whites of weather worn sails, and flashes of metallic sparkles in the treasure and water. They work beautifully together as a collection. 

It's interesting to see the ratios of types of different interpretations. There are a high quantity of very similar, drowning ship designs. 5 out of 9 show sinking ships, although one also has a girl on the sand watching the ship go down and the others are just out at sea. One definitely has a Titanic-esque look about it. We have 1 card with pirate treasure, 1 card with a cove and lighthouse (which clearly isn't doing a good enough job with all of the wrecking going on in the collection!) and 2 out of 9 cards show sea life around a wreck area. I'm fairly sure that covers all of the inspiration points I wrote down on my fact sheet too actually which is amazing. 

The textured paper making up the body of this ship is really nice, and I love how the frayed edges of fabric look like the spray shooting up from angry waves, accentuated by the feather stitches in white and blue around it. There's definitely a wild look to this sea. 

And there are HUGE waves in the below one! Just look at the enormous swell the steam ship has been caught in here with all that motion in the different coloured rows of back stitch and the dark stormy skies above. 

I love the perspective in this card with us peering through a rock archway or out of the mouth of a cave or something. The rolling couched waves do look very uninviting, I would certainly not be paddling in that, far too swirly. But the lighthouse is so darn cute perched on its rocky outcrop there. 

The colours really make this card for me with the bright blue fluffy yarn contrasting so beautifully with the orange fish and their blue eyelashes. They look like they are living among some old rigging and bits of ship, now made into a natural habitat and covered in sea plants and debris. 

Abi's card reminds me of when you get those shipping containers that fall into the sea and then hundreds of logs or Lego bricks wash up on the shoreline and residents go completely bonkers collecting it all up. I'm not exactly sure if that's what she intended with her card but that's what it looks like to me - do you see something different?

These sails have been so whipped around by the high winds on the stormy sea that they are practically non-existent! The fabric backing for this is brilliant, it looks like whooshes of wind, but also of a starry night sky, and then there are glimmers of an ocean floor below - a bit like when in movies the camera is half in and half out of the water so you get those two different worlds in one image. 

The detail on Jackie's sails here is wonderful. The attention to detail in creating the raggedy edges, and the three-dimension of stitching parts of them upright so that they look like they are blowing is fantastic. She's found exactly the right sky fabric too with the seagull swooping around above all of the drama below. 

I love this treasure chest, it makes me chuckle. There will be a very cross pirate somewhere with his 

'hard-earned' treasure spilling out like that onto the sand. The big sequins at the bottom are strange, they almost look like plastic rather than the metallic foil sequins you usually get. I wonder where she got those from.

I'm sure you'll agree that there is beautiful work here! Gorgeous colour work, brilliant layering and perspective to create the story and suck you into the drama unfolding and just all-round, wonderful miniature art pieces! 

Once the photos have all been taken - and I have to do different types of photo, there's the big collection photo, close ups to have on the blog of my favourite card details, and whole card photos to have on the website - I have the head-scratching job of looking through my Excel spreadsheet to see who hasn't had a card from whom yet and trying to make sure that I am being fair with my sharing of the cards. It gets more difficult toward the end of the year as we don't have huge numbers in any given month, it can range from 7-12 cards sent in, so if I can't send back out a card from a completely different person, I can check and do a repeat person but from much earlier in the year (rather than sending Amy cards by Julie twice in consecutive months, if you see what I mean). 

If you would like to jump in to the swap and have a go at the next theme you're more than welcome! Have a look at the dedicated ATC page on my website for more details and for past images of yearly collections. 

Shipwrecked

I found this Stitchscape theme quite tough to get my head around. I'm not sure why because I came up with the idea in the first place, but by the time September rolled around and I had to make a card up, I just drew a blank for a while. After some internet browsing I decided that I wanted to do something underwater so that I could put some fun little characters and sea creatures into the cards, so I've used a mottled brown batik fabric to create the outline of a ship-like shape and then had all of my fun making starfish and crabs on the seabed.

It was physically quite hard to stitch actually as the multiple layers of batik fabric were not at all happy to let a needle through them and I ended up with some bruises on my thumb and finger from the wiggling of the needle that was going on. The wreck fabric was secured down with blanket stitch around the edge, and I added just a little bit of plank detailing at the top with a line of whipped back stitch. Most of my detail in the boat was to add a porthole using a doughnut shape of brown felt - I had meant to fill in the circle behind it in a darker fabric, or thin shiny black plastic or something, but I completely forgot to  do it until it was too late! I considered filling in the hole with satin stitch or a circle of felt cut to fit but I didn't think either option would fill it in the best way so ended up just working a simple row of back stitch in a thick coton perle thread (which really hated travelling through the batik fabric) to just kind of nod at there being  a darker area. I'm pretty sure some portholes in real life used to have plugs in them to stop the water coming in so that's what we're going with instead - the closed porthole window. 

The top fabric layer is a brilliant batik fabric that to me looks exactly like how water looks like from underneath with the ripples of dark and light, and shadows of things flying overhead. Similarly the next layer down (which you can now barely see) is another batik which is just ripples of colour, but a bit more turquoise-y to fit in with my seaweed plants and to blend the colour down to the greens in the bottom layer. 

The bottom fabric was a gem of a find in my stash. Mr DT gave it to me for my birthday this year as part of a pack of fabrics, and it had starfish printed on it!!! Beautiful pink outlined starfish with some dashes in the middle for texture. I carefully cut around these, trying to focus on the starfish - three of the cards have one each but one card caught the pattern where there were two buddied up together. 

I've actually only stitched the starfish on this layer really, ignoring all of the plants and the leaf shapes that are also in the print. I've gone around the existing drawn lines with two strand whipped back stitch (whip stitch over back stitch for a solid line), and just added my own dashes with some seed stitch in the middle. 

The seaweed itself is a puffy, roving yarn which I have pulled apart, layered down and worked feather stitches over to give them some leafy shapes. I've also pulled apart some goldwork purl wire (2mm smooth purl) and couched that down for a really discreet sparkle over the top. Any gaps between these seaweed pieces where the top of my starfish layer is, I've then filled with some french knots to be built up silty sand drifts around my shipwreck.

I do like my little crabs - they only made it onto three of the cards because I couldn't fit one onto the double starfish card. The body is made with an oval of red felt, stitched down with a single strand of back stitch around the shape, then I've done really terrible scrappy straight stitch claws and back stitch legs (and yes I did Google how many legs a crab has and it is 8 with two front claws). To contrast with the red I've gone for quite a bright blue to make french knot eyes and add just a little bit of pattern with back and straight stitches on his shell.

Bubbles in silver metallic thread have been added with small french knots, and longer straight stitch stems in green were added around the starfishes to help them feel more comfortable and less sticky-outy.

Photographing anything in this house is proving to be very tricky with a small furry creature who is interested and involved in everything you do. It's like having a slightly prickly shadow that just follows me around getting his paws and tail in everything!

So there we go! My Shipwrecked Stitchscape Swap cards ready to go. The stitch run down for these cards is; blanket stitch, whipped back stitch, french knots, feather stitch, back stitch, couching, straight stitch and seed stitch.