Bumblee Cards

I have been looking forward to this swap. We are very bumblebee friendly in our family and I've often made up sugar drinks to help bees struggling across the patio to give them an energy boost. Baby F is currently obsessed with bees and we have to really watch him as he'll go right up to them to watch as closely as he possibly can. Our gardens/my balcony are planted with as many bee and insect friendly plants as we can stuff in them and we try to have insect boxes and wild areas where they would thrive. There don't seem to be as many bees buzzing around this year though which is slightly concerning.

The fabrics I chose to make the background of the card all remind me of honeycomb in some way, be it the cell like structures or repetitive patten, so although I haven't physically drawn in honeycomb, or a hive, I still wanted it to kind of give off the look of the inside of one. 

For the flower fabric at the bottom, I picked it out of my special bundle of Kaffe Fassett fabrics which Mr DT gave me a few years back. The colours are so vivid that it can be tricky to actually put them into a Stitchscape but for this they worked perfectly as there were the blobby cell shapes in the background and then every now and then there was a fairly realistic flower plopped in the middle. I've fussy cut the flowers to make them fit in on their own so that they become the feature that the bee is aiming for. 

The bees themselves are a piece of black felt I've cut to form the base of the body, and freehand close straight stitches (probably not neat enough to be satin stitches) in yellow and white to make the stripes of colour. Because they are stitched over the felt, it's also a little bit padded so the bee sits proud of the surface of the fabric which also looked lovely. 

The wings were tricky. I wanted them to be slightly ethereal and delicate, and to lift off the surface so they could flap around. When I did butterfly wings before, they were made of three layers of cotton fabric, calico and magazine paper so that was way too thick for my bee wings. However, stash collection to the rescue! Rootling around in my cupboard of all things, I came across some angel paper (I think it's called) which would be absolutely ideal!! 

The only problem was that it wasn't stiff enough to hold itself up and I was worried about the edges tearing if they were handled so I decided to try and glue it to a piece of plastic packaging from my recycling (I learnt from the allotment garden cards that the flat side of a plastic strawberry punnet works wonders) crumpling it up a little bit as well to give texture - although that didn't work and I ended up trying to flatten it again. 

The glue didn't really stick, so I also ended up stitching blanket stitch around the edges of the wings in invisible thread to hold it all together, which actually worked out to be very pretty! It's given a discreet scalloped edge to the wings which I think looks really nice, and definitely worth it as sewing with invisible thread in the evening is a real pain to see!!!

I also stitched the wings down onto the bee bodies with invisible thread so you can't see how they're attached unless you're looking very closely. It's like magic.

Bee legs were added with back stitch, using about three or four strands to make them quite chunky and I also added some black eyes in satin stitch, partly to help hold down that final end of the black felt. Little antennae were popped on and my bees were finished!

These cards take on their own personalities when they are stitched onto the card back and cut out. It's a really exciting moment because it can look really messy when it's all together in one hoop, each card a different direction and loose threads and frayed edges everywhere. Occasionally if I'm stitching on the bus or in a coffee shop in the morning, I get people coming over to see what I'm doing and they don't always know how to react. You end up with a quiet "oh.....that's nice" and a brief exit because it's not a proper picture that they can see and understand. But when the cards on their own, as they are meant to be, suddenly it's a whole different reaction. 

The backgrounds are very simply stitched. The top blue layer just has a few rows of running stitch, starting out as a long line across the card and then breaking up and fading out toward the top, almost like swirls of wind or clouds. 

Below that the squares have been outlined with one straight stitch per side, then bullion knots across the top to edge the fabric layer. 

The yellow cross stitch pattern fabric I have picked out a few colours and added actually cross stitches over the top if those colours appeared. There's a brown colour which I've used two strands for, and a pale yellow which just has one strand. This has made each card completely different because of the larger pattern repeat of the design, but also meant I didn't have to commit to cross stitching the whole piece. French knots have topped the top of this fabric layer. 

For the flower fabric I've outlined each of the blotches with a single strand of back stitch, edged the fabric with a single strand of blanket stitch, added two strand, two twist french knots to be my trailing pollen around the flower and the bee, and then worked satin stitches in the flower petals following the colours and direction of each petal. Pistil stitches have been added for the stamens. 

I really like how each of these cards is slightly different thanks to the placement and design of the larger flower print. It's almost like each is a different photograph of the same bee methodically working its way through a flowerbed. 

The stitch run down for these cards is; running stitch, bullion knots, straight stitch, french knots, cross stitch, satin stitch, back stitch, blanket stitch and pistil stitch.

Sunset Seascapes

The best part of our little flat is this view. It's not a huge property and it didn't tick all of our boxes when we were trying to get on the property ladder, but we decided that we could live with what it did have and make it work. This view was an absolutely unexpected bonus!! 

I think, had we lived here during the pandemic and lockdown, we would have gone slightly stir crazy but there is a fire escape balcony, which we use as our main entrance because it's so much nicer than the dark, cramped staircase off another door in an alleyway. I've added saddle pots to the balcony railings and pots around the edge and I think I've cracked the planting too as quite a lot died last year because it can be windy and stark being on the edge of a ridge. Alpines are the way to go!

Anyway, I bring this up because during the summer, the sun sets right in front of this balcony and when it gets truly hot, this is the best place to be. I love the golden sun moment and, occasionally when it turns to red, we get the most amazing deep red shadows on that side of the house. One of the best times of day to photograph Stitchscapes is when the sun is setting and the light is so warm and beautiful. 

This is a piece I started after the Sussex Stitchers workshop (in a previous blog post) as I really wanted to use that Pailettes yarn with the teeny tiny sequins, and also to experiment with the two new stitches I learnt. The fabrics are a little bit choppy but I was more interested in starting to add textures than worrying about what the fabrics looked like. 

I took this piece to work on at a craft fair I was at in Ringmer, organised by the Ringmer WI, and a lady there gave me a whole bunch of different craft flower stamens! How amazing is that? I spoke to the Ringer WI last year and gave a Stitchscape talk to them, which is how I ended up being invited to have a stand at their craft fair. We had discussed using these stamens then so when she realised I was there again she rushed home and picked them up for me. 

There were several more unusual ones but I really liked these little green stamens which have a very narrow and irregularly shaped head on them. I think some of these could be classed as 'vintage' as they have a slightly aged look to them and some of the ends are falling off but it makes them look really interesting when nestled in among rolls of furnishing tassel trimming. 

The combinations of the textures also look fabulous when silhouetted against the glowing sun. I love taking photos like this to show how three dimensional these hoops are, the glitter and sparkle of the metallics, and to see what shadows are cast.

You can see the Pailettes yarn used to edge the watery fabric running right the way across the hoop. The Sussex Stitchers lady who gave me a bit of each had two colours which work really nicely when twisted and stitched down together. I've made the rest of the water slightly glittery by adding some metallic stranded threads in a whip stitch over running or back stitches.

I've also used some 100% silk threads I was given which are much shinier than the usual Anchor stranded cottons I favour. You can see this in the Cast-on Stitches (one of my newly learned ones!) making kind of an orangey coral between the shells. Basically the stitch is a hybrid between a bullion knot and a drizzle stitch. You set the length of the stitch in the same way as a bullion knot, but rather than wrapping the thread around the needle, you 'cast-on' and make little twisted loops around the needle which then creates that extra flick and texture. I've deliberately done mine so that I've put on more cast-on loops than needed to fill the stitch gap so that they loop up and I can work them to overlap and twist around. I've seen these used to create flower petals but I was thinking more of seaweed or coral for mine. 

The silk thread is also variegated which has made it especially pretty when worked in bunches like this, although the thread is very thin so it takes a while to build up enough loops. 

The other stitch I learned was called Cup Stitch where you essentially weave a little cup shape, starting with a triangle of three stitches stitched through the fabric. Once the triangle base is in place, you come up on the inside of one of the stitches, slide your needle underneath the nearest stitch and then again to make a loop. Go through the loop and pull to tighten, then make another loop on the same stitch and pull, followed by two loops (or more depending on the size of your triangle) on each of the other two base stitches. When you get back to the beginning, you basically keep going through the top of the stitches of the previous round and can work up in a spiral as high as you like! When finished you can slide your needle down through the inside of the cup, or within the stitches themselves and gently pull the thread through so the cup stands up. 

Sometimes it can be a bit difficult to see where the loops on the previous round were so I think it will take a bit of practice (had a similar feel to crochet though), and it was definitely easier to make these stitches with a thicker thread. I've used a cotton perlé thread on these ones, also because it's a single thread rather than a stranded cotton. I wonder if you could stuff them with things, a big bead might be interesting - like a stalk eye staring at you!

This isn't finished, I've got a bit more to do on it but it's nearly there! I'm not quite happy with that top section with the cup stitches so I think I need to add something else to it, just not sure what yet. 

Mr DT's Nymans Birthday

I will never tire of these wonderful National Trust properties with the huge gardens and acres of Buttercup fields. Not having a garden myself I appreciate the grass all the more I think, and the ability to just let Baby F loose to roam around. 

We visited Nymans for Mr DT's birthday this year. He wasn't really fussed about doing anything but I think birthday's should be celebrated so my family dragged him out for a birthday picnic, complete with presents and cake, on the lawns outside the big house and I think he was secretly rather chuffed. 

Interestingly, having been a visitor of this site for about 30 years (we used to come here with my grandparents when I was small), I went in a part of it I've never been in before!! Quite a large chunk of the house burnt down in a housefire and, due to building material rations at the time, it was never rebuilt so that part has stayed a romantic ruin since then. This time when we went, they have made it into a little secret indoor/outdoor garden!

It was beautiful, really lush and calm and secluded. I can imagine that through the seasons the gardeners will have cleverly planted so that different pots flower or change colour at different times so that the scene is always changing. We'd gone in May (I know - I'm nearly two months behind writing this!) so there weren't many flowers out but lots of green, happy looking plants. Baby F was very taken with this enormous water feature quietly bubbling away in a corner. 

I can't decide whether the building is more impressive as a ruin and being able to see blue sky through those wonderful windows, or if it would have looked even more stunning as a whole building with a roof. I love that there are plants growing through the architecture, giving the stonework a cuddle, but I'm sure there would have been impressive chimneys, and I'm a sucker for a good chimney structure. 

The gardens were very pretty, lots of purples/pinks with the Wisteria pergola (although I'm sure I've seen it more covered in flowers before, there really didn't seem that many this time) foxgloves and aquilegia. There was a group of photographers bobbing around behind all of the plants taking close up photographs of leaves or butterflies, getting very excited by a sighting of something slightly unusual and going haring off together to snap photos of the new 'thing'.

My favourite bit is the walled garden. It's enormous and has areas of wild meadow, orchards, huge fat flower beds, tightly clipped and structured hedges, water fountains, carved archways... it's really beautiful. I fear as I walk around that I always take photos of the same thing but each time you see it, in a slightly different season, or a different type of weather or time of day, they look different. If you scroll up to the top of the blog, on the right hand side there is a search bar and if you key in 'Nymans' you can see all of the posts and photos I've taken and published from there - I've just done it myself and it's almost like a snapshot of the property throughout all of the seasons.

I have no idea what the above tree is but the flowers are fantastic! It looks like a birthday cake, which seemed timely, and they were massive! We were very well treated by the weather and it was such a lovely family day out. We are very lucky to have so many of these protected and cared for spaces near to us.