Rainbow Showers ATCs

I think one of the top holiday destinations on my bucket list is to go and see tulip fields in Holland (maybe take a hot air balloon ride over them too which would tick two bucket list items off at once). I've been to Amsterdam in November time before and there were big tulip bulb markets everywhere and beautiful snow on the canals, but to see these glorious colours and happy rainbow stripes in the flesh would just be, oh so amazing!! 

When setting up the Stitchscape Swap ATC themes, I hadn't necessarily thought about tulips - the themes are all kind of based on what I associate each month with and the theme, Rainbow Showers, came more from thinking about April Showers and, oddly enough, an old TV advert with the "Drip, drip drop, little April Shower" song from Bambi with lots of steampunk cogs and wheels falling everywhere. I can't remember what it was advertising but it's funny where your mind goes! 

(I'll pop the Walt Disney lyrics to the song at the bottom of this post in case you are inspired by it to create your own steampunk rain fall!)

After all of those thoughts though, when it actually came down to it, tulip fields and the idea of rivers of rainbows made up of individual tulip droplets, gave me more inspiration. I have so many beautiful, bright fabrics that I could use that it was kind of an immediate YES and an awkward run to my stash drawers moment. 

I did a little bit of online photo research and was also reminded of the lovely windmills that are often associated with the tulip fields, which contrast so nicely in terms of colour too with the dark windmill and over-the-top tulips. 

My chosen fabrics include quite a few Kaffe Fassett prints which I was given for Christmas by my lovely boyfriend, which means that each stripe is slightly different due to the size of the print as well as Kaffe's uncontrollable desire for complicated colour use and patterns. I think all except the reddish colour stripe is a Kaffe print - the red one is just a pretty abstract floral design I picked up somewhere. 

I've teamed these with some lovely plains to balance out the drama happening at the bottom, and decided to use a dark brown for my windmill as a contrast. 

Initially the windmill was just going to be the plain shape with some sails stitched over it, but I had to make it slightly more complicated and make a base for the sails to originate from so, after working some rows of back stitch across the fabric to look a little bit like the wooden boards that the windmills seemed to be made from in the photos, and using the same colour thread to couch a border round, I cut little tiny circles from white felt to go in the centre of the windmill. I thought it would be easier to have a padded circle to go over for the shape rather than try to stitch a circle free hand so I carefully worked satin stitch over the top of the felt which created a, very pleasing, great padded lump on each windmill. 

From this I then stitched the first sail using straight stitches originating from the centre of the padded circle and (as I was locked in my bedroom with Covid at the time) got creative with creating a 'ruler' so that I could make sure that each sail was the same size, cutting up a bit of envelope to be my length and to help me keep things at roughly 90 degrees. 

The first two sails were fine to stitch but after that, with so much thread going through this one space, the effort this caused my fingers and thumbs was quite considerable!! It was definitely worth it though and I love the 3D look this has given them. I've used three different shades of brown thread for the whole windmill too which has worked nicely. 

My initial thought was to work big french knots along the bottom edge of the green fabric and to cover up the bottom of the windmill but then I remembered that I had some lovely, hand-dyed, cotton scrim in my drawer so I've cut a little strip of that for each one and used that instead. The thought is that it would be a tree line separating the tulips from the windmill, with the green fabric behind as further trees (it's not going to be mountains in Holland!). 

I didn't feel like I needed to add masses of texture to the bottom rainbow fabrics, although they did take quite a long time to do as they were so fiddly. I've tried to keep the fabric prints fairly similar to what they were originally, and used french knots to separate each layer and really bring home that droplet appearance. 

Starting left to right, the yellow layer has had its splodges filled in with satin stitch, the orange layer has been drawn around with a single strand of back stitch between each colour line, the red layer has just had some horizontal straight stitches added to cover any area of the mid-red shade and kind of scatter throughout the print, the pink layer has again had satin stitches covering the shapes (and this was fiddly to try and keep the skinny lines), and the blue/purple layer has had two strands of back stitches covering the spidery trails in the print. 

I could have added more and put in more colours (used more of the orange tones for the orange layer or added in stitches around the big blobs in the pink layer) but I think I would have ruined it if I'd gone too overboard. The focus is more on the colour and the scene as a whole - you are left to imagine those tulips yourself rather than be deliberately shown each one. 

I really love how each piece is different. Obviously the overall idea is the same, the fabrics are the same and the stitches used on each layer are the same but there are just little bits which make each card unique - the placement of the print, even the placement of the fabrics in some cases and how high the layers are, and where the embroidery stitches are too. I think my favourite one is where the scrim has more yellow to it on one side which matches the yellows of the fabrics below, like the sun has just come out on that one section. Do you have a favourite one?

From Walt Disney's "Bambi": 

Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around

Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To your beautiful sound

Beautiful sound

Beautiful sound

Drip, drop, drip, drop

Drip, drip, drop

When the sky is cloudy
Your pretty music
Will brighten the day

Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
You come along with a song right away
Come with your beautiful music

Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around
Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
What can compare with your beautiful sound

Drip, drip drop
When the sky is cloudy
You come along, come along with your pretty little song
Drip, drip drop
When the sky is cloudy
You come along, come along with your pretty little song

Gay little roundalay
Gay little roundalay
Song of the rainy day
Song of the rainy day
How I love to hear your patter
Pretty little pitter-patter
Helter-skelter when you pelter
Troubles always seem to scatter

Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around
Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
What can compare with your beautiful sound

Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around
Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
What can compare with your beautiful sound
Beautiful sound

Daffodil ATCs

In an odd sort of a way, I have been enjoying my unexpected week away from the world due to having Covid-19. It's been tricky to just sit in one room, and not overly comfortable either (golly how I miss the sofa!) , but actually it's been bliss to be able to just sit and sew and not feel guilty about it. I've also managed to get quite far ahead with my Stitchscape Swap ATCs and am now just about to start the May ones! 

This theme is for March and is 'Daffodils/The Coming of Spring'. Handily enough I have a Daffodil fabric print which was just absolutely perfect for this theme, and I've teamed it with some spring-like greens and blues, and a lovely Marigold-esque pattern to give even more of a Spring feel. 

These actually took a long time to do - amazing how something so little can be so time consuming, but those Marigold flowers, created from rows of detached chain stitch worked in circles, took a fairly long time to do. I actually drew circles on the backing fabric, poking my finger through the material to draw around my fingertip where the flower centre was, and then drawing rough circles around that to give me a guide on where to work my chain stitch rows. 

Each flower uses three colours of thread, the outer layer uses a darker yellow, with a couple of rows of a mid yellow and a pale yellow in the centre - inspired by the colours actually on the fabric print itself which followed a similar sort of pattern. The centre has been filled with pale green french knots which worked really nicely. What I like about them is that they are positioned differently on each ATC so each one has its own personality. 

The top fabric layers were much quicker to do! I started on the striped layer, working rows of back stitch in a pale green along the pale green stripes, and then whipped back stitch (all in a single strand for delicacy) in a darker green along the dark green stripes. It's nice to have a slight change in texture on those columns. 

The blue layer above didn't need much, and I toyed with the idea of not adding any embroidery to it but decided in the end to just quickly run some rows of running stitch in a matching blue shade, following the line of the bullion knots that I've edged the striped layer with. 

The spotty fabric on the third row is a lovely batik fabric which uses a darker blue for its spots than appears anywhere else on the card so, although I've covered each spot with either a french knot, or rough satin stitches, it actually works a bit better now I've stitched a fancy trimming over it because there is less of the dark blue to draw your eye. 

The trimmings were added almost after the embroidery was done, which is fine but for the top trimming (with the lovely fluffy loops) it stuck out like a sore thumb over the top of those chain stitch petals so I've tried to make it more natural looking, as well as hide any rough edges of the layer below that may have been missed, by adding some french knots along the bottom, sneaking upward into the loops as slightly smaller knots (two twist as opposed to the three twist knots along the bottom). This has worked really nicely so that's a relief!

The Daffodil fabric at the bottom is just beautiful though. The original fabric has all of the Daffs the same colour but I've switched this up by using three different colours, a darker yellow for the full frontal flower and randomly positioned mid and light yellows mixed together for the side-on flowers. The trumpets have all been stitched in cream. Each petal has been sort of satin stitched, although I've kind of just gone over and over the shape so that the printed petal is covered and it's created little bobbles which is rather effective! At the ends of the trumpets, and the centre of the darker flowers I've added a little bead just for a bit of glam and sparkle. 

The leaves have been roughly gone over with straight stitches in a single strand of green to give them some texture, and the stems whip stitched in a slightly darker colour to give them a bit of contrast.

 I think these have turned out really well and, I know I'm really far ahead from the other ladies in the group but I'm so looking forward to seeing what everyone else comes up with for this theme! 

Dappled Sunflower Fields Stitchscape

 I've tried thinking up a cool name for this Stitchscape but, I'm blaming being stuck in one room for a week for lack of inspiration (C-virus, darn you!), there are no good names coming to mind. I'm happy to change the title of this piece if anyone else has a good suggestion though! Maybe read through to the end of this post to see what this Stitchscape is all about and where it came from and then let me know in the comments. If not, Dappled Sunflower Fields will have to do!

If I recall correctly this was another workshop example of layering fabrics and started out being thrown together one evening when I realised that I didn't have enough examples to show the students in an upcoming class. I have a lot of green batik fabrics so this is always a good starting point if I need something thrown together quickly but that works well. The variety of patterns and colours you can achieve in batik fabrics is endlessly fascinating to me and it is probably the biggest collection of a fabric 'type' that I have in my stash. 

To the batiks I've added a big spot in green - it's not a polka dot as the spots aren't quite regular -, a nice little pin tack print, and a yellowy/green space dyed fabric. 

The space dyed fabric was cut randomly, I haven't fussy cut it, but the section that I snipped off really reminded me of a shaft of sunshine cutting through a field so I decided to use that as my inspiration and really play on that idea with flowers and foliage on top. The centre of the fabric was much yellowy-er (is that a word?) so my woven wheel Sunflowers there are a paler yellow, almost cream, right in the middle, getting darker as they work outward towards the edge of the hoop to a dark gold. To make them gel together they have all got the same colour and number of beads in the centre (which close up now makes them look like nests with bird eggs in), and I think actually the effect of sunshine lighting up the centre works a bit better from slightly further away. 

I've also tried to continue the slight light and dark idea with the straight stitch stems worked around the flowers to help give them some context and to go over the edge of the fabric layer. There are several different shades of green in these stems as I was using up random leftovers that were clogging up my thread tin although I don't actually know how many I've used as this piece also took me quite a long time to get around to finishing - similarly to the Fiery Haze Stitchscape, this one was being lugged around in a bag on the bus for a while!

It didn't look quite right with just straight stems though so I added in green french knot tapers for some additional leafy texture, and enhanced the ground a bit with little irregular straight stitches as the top level of stems looked like they were floating without anything to stand on but bare fabric. You do need to have an element of the horizontal for a ground layer to stand your stems on! 

More french knots were added in yellow around the flowers to help them look a little less 'plonked down' so hopefully those look like fallen petals or maybe new buds, or perhaps Buttercups? Do they flower at the same time as Sunflowers? I don't think they do so maybe allow me some artistic license here, or make of them what you will. 

The pin head fabric at the top actually took a while to achieve. The print itself is the little 'T' shapes formed out of tiny dots along the top and a solid line for the trunk so I've replicated this with one strand, one twist french knots along the top edge. They are so tiny! You can feel them more than you can see that they are knots almost. Bullion knots have been used to edge the fabric, with some little kisses on the calico backing fabric above. 

I've worked stem stitch on the layer below to give those vertical lines where the pattern has slight changes in it, and added some little french knots to look like bushes or trees, with more french knots to edge the top of the layer and keep things neat and tidy. 

The dark green layer on the left has got a combination of stitches happening. There's whipped back stitch on the solid olive green lines, with back stitch on the more fiddly squiggled lines that look like tiny islands, and then the dark section has just been textured with some rows of running stitch. Bullion knots in olive green have been used to edge this layer. 

The layer that took the longest, and a lot of patience, has to be this slightly spotty layer. I'm sure I do this technique over and over again, and then say I'm not doing it any more but when there's a fabric that has small little splodges on it, I just want to fill them all in with rough satin stitches because the texture at the end is so nice - but it takes so long!! There are so many lovely colours happening here though, it was another great place to be using up all of those oddments of thread in my tin and I think I can count four or five used here which works really well with all of the tones in the background of the fabric. There's sunshine and shadow, light and dark in this one fabric strip alone! I've used all of these colours, or most of them, to make up a couched thread edging - the quickest part of the whole layer to finish. 

Do you like my fancy ric-rac trimming? It's an amazingly textured trim and has bulky weaves in it with a metallic thread shot through - the colours match perfectly so I had to use it to help combine all of these greens. The metallic in the trim also matches the metallic in the beads (which is pure chance, not something I've deliberately thought about). 

Keeping things simple (for once) for the spot layer underneath, I have alternated filling in some of the shapes with satin stitch to give them a padded look and just going around others with back stitch. I've also varied the direction of the satin stitches so that the light picks up on the thread differently. There isn't much of a sheen to the stranded cotton itself (which is either Anchor or DMC stranded) but it's just enough to make a difference I think.

The stitch run down for this piece is as follows; french knots, bullion knots, straight stitch, stem stitch, back stitch, whip stitch, running stitch, couching, satin stitch, woven wheel stitch and beading.

So there we have it! This poor neglected Stitchscape has waited a long time for its reveal and doesn't even have a name I'm particularly happy with! It was eventually finished in December 2021 after being used for workshop purposes and carried around the country in a bag, then the hoop had Ribena spilled on it (which washed off, thankfully!) and then it was popped in my box of other hoops and forgotten about - I didn't even photograph it properly!! But, we're now all caught up and friends again so that's good. 

Return of the Christmas Market

The last face to face market I attended (I think) was in December 2019 and since then all of my display stands have been gathering dust in the studio. Although workshops returned, in controlled environments, the risk of exhibiting and selling at markets, fairs or events was just too high. Not least because of Covid-19 but also because the venues couldn't necessarily guarantee refunds on the cost of the stand if another lockdown was to happen, or if you yourself were suddenly unable to participate because of Covid. The bigger venues will charge at least £500 plus for the smallest stand in the smallest corner, all to be paid up front but, for small businesses like mine, it's a huge gamble in the first instance and when you have a global pandemic which can change situations in hours, it just wasn't worth it. 

But, very luckily for me, a local venue - Bridge Cottage Heritage Centre - which is in my hometown started back up their Craft & Artisan Markets at the end of 2021, as well as offering spaces for Late Night Shopping at Christmas. All were at a very reasonable price which wouldn't hurt the bank so much if there were any issues and I signed up straight away for the Christmas ones as I know that I do better at that time of year when people are looking for slightly unusual gifts for their loved ones. 

The first one was at the end of November 2021 and I was actually quite nervous, slightly concerned I'd forgotten how it all worked and went together, and how to smile and interact with people. There were lots of questions about whether anyone would actually come, if it was dangerous, would people wear their masks (we did have masks on, just not for these photos), would anyone actually buy anything as there are so many people now fallen on harder times?? But, I needn't have worried as we had a lovely day meeting lots of people and re-discovering customers who we hadn't seen in a couple of years, hearing everyone's stories about lockdown and what they'd been up to. 

My lovely man is absolutely amazing at these things. He has no interest in embroidery himself but he supports me and helps out and mans the stand whilst I nip to the toilet, brings drinks, fetches and carries and just sits and watches his Youtube videos on his photo to entertain himself, all whilst sitting next to me and smiling at people who walk past. For these events he did even more of the fetching and carrying as we are expecting Baby Dotty in April and my bump had just started to show so I wasn't allowed to carry anything too heavy. 

A week or so later and we were back at Bridge Cottage for the second market of our year, the town's Late Night Shopping event. The Cottage was looking absolutely gorgeous - it's a Wealden Hall House built in 1436 and I can remember parts of it being a sweet shop, an art gallery, a card shop....it's been flooded several times and more recently restored and now used for events like weddings, talks, exhibitions and markets. How homey does it look though with the giant Christmas tree outside and lights on in all of the windows? 

We were in the same space as before, right in front of the upstairs, right hand window (which gave us a great view of the courtyard in front which was also eventually filled with stands, and a brass band!)

To celebrate the triumphant return of Dotty Textiles to physical market places, I'd treated myself to a magnetic display board where I could present my shell and holly magnets. They get a little bit lost on the table but I sold quite a few from the board so it works which is brilliant! I'm hoping to cover it with something a little more in-keeping with my theme of natural wooden stands, wicker baskets and natural creamy fabrics but, as the board only arrived the afternoon of the show, there wasn't time and it doesn't look too bad as it is. 

I kept the display set up fairly similar to the previous week as it had worked well, although moved the card spinner off onto my little separate fold out table to make more room on the main table for baskets of kits. Kits are my absolute best selling items which is fair enough because I can't allow myself to sell my creations cheaply so, although my original hoop pieces get appreciated and talked about a lot, they are mostly out of everyone's budgets whereas the kits are more affordable if you are happy to create your own and have a go. 

It's for the same reason that I have cards and prints of my original pieces as a way to try and make the creation of them worthwhile. For some reason, creating art with fabric is viewed differently to creating art with paint (although in my opinion it takes much longer and can be much harder to achieve!) and whilst you get collectors of artwork and paintings on the walls everywhere you go, how often do you see embroidered pictures, or textile art? Painters can often put together a new piece in an afternoon, scan it in and have prints made up of it for sale within the week - Stitchscapes can take a week just to finish for the small ones. I'm not undervaluing the work of painters, I'm a collector myself and went to college with many of them, but some comments you overhear whilst behind a stand of embroidery work can be quite galling sometimes.

These photos, by the way, have all been snapped on my phone (and mostly edited in Instagram because it's fairly dark in Bridge Cottage thanks to the small windows and mood lighting) so apologies for the changes in colour. Look, there's my lovely chap again - this time in a matching Christmas shirt I bought for him and made him wear so he looks festive! He won't wear hats so I couldn't put him in a Santa hat, but the shirt is quite cool. Bless him, the late night shopping was on a Friday night so he had done a full day at work, driven home, changed and walked straight out to the Cottage to be with me and bring something to eat. What an absolute gem. (And also a shout out to my parents who had helped me carry everything from the car to set up that day.)

We had decided that we would stay on for the craft market that was happening the following day so it was quite easy for us to leave at 9pm on the Friday, just leaving everything as it was and wandering home, hand in hand in the chilly mist, to return for 10am the following day. It was nice not to have to pack up in the evening for sure. 

I did take a Stitchscape project with me just in case there were any lulls in punters wandering around. The day after late night shopping can often be a gamble. If everyone finished their shopping the night before then it would be a really quiet day, but if there were lots of people who couldn't make it in (there was a queue and 45 minute peak waiting time to get in the previous night!) then they might come back and it be really busy. 

As it was, it was a bit of both, with quiet and busy periods so I did get some time for some stitching on my project which was nice - especially in front of such a pretty window! Plus we had fish cake and chips for lunch - mmmm. 

This year I haven't yet signed up to any more markets or events as I don't know if I will be able to manage them with a 8-9 month old baby in tow, I'll have to see how it goes. Maybe a few little local ones will be the way to go again. I'm keeping my Etsy and web shops open throughout the year though so I'm not going anywhere, I'll just be a tad preoccupied on learning how to be a Mum!

Fiery Haze Stitchscape

 

Every Stitchscape has a story, sometimes they're stories that I've written about them (like for Bartholomew's Oast House, Mrs Heggardy's Windmill or Lionel's Lighthouse) but usually it's just the story of how they came to be; where the inspiration started, or didn't start, and what was happening around the time of their creation. 

For this Stitchscape, its journey began in October 2021 at a workshop I ran at Made & Making where we unfortunately had a few last minute cancellations due to illness - more of the dreaded C-lurgy - so it ended up being a tiny class of two lovely ladies, a mother and daughter, and me. 

In every workshop there's always a period around about lunchtime where I'm not needed for advice or demonstrations for the minute so I wander around chatting to everyone and joining in the group conversations around the table but, with only two people in the class, both of whom were already fairly self sufficient and with experience in embroidery and textiles, there was quite a lot of time for me to sit twiddling my thumbs. The class was focused on making and using felt rocks in a Stitchscape so I ended up making a few spare rocks in case it would come in useful and decided to join the ladies in making a Stitchscape from the scrap boxes. 

I have lots of little oddments in those boxes, all sorts of patterns and things sneak their way in there, the jumble of fabrics is barely contained now which isn't exactly the outcome I wanted - the whole point was to keep the mass of offcuts at a reasonable level but I'm sure I somehow manage to leave with more scrap fabric than I started with! 

The rocks I had been making were in a dark charcoal grey and it made me think about silhouettes and sunsets so the colours I picked out of the box were all oranges and yellows to contrast with the dark grey. It's a colour scheme I've returned to every now and then because it works so well visually but this piece does remind me of the first few Stitchscapes I made which have oddly shaped pieces stitched into them because I literally plucked them out of the scrap box as they were and just trimmed off the frayed edges. For sunsets the happy scrappy technique works really nicely because you do get that in those beautiful skies, where cloud lines are tinged slightly different colours and random shapes are picked out of the ether and painted a different shade of orange to the rest. 

There was actually only one lonely little rock left over at the end of the class so when I got home I added a few more to go with it, using different shades of grey from my wool felt stash. 

Considering that this is only a 15cm hoop I didn't actually finish it until about two months later -  although it travelled with me on the bus every week, staring at me in the bag wondering why I wasn't stitching it and bringing its layers to life. Sometimes you just need a break I think. 

Eventually though some form of stitching mojo returned enough to get this piece done! The top fabric layer, a gorgeous batik fabric, has had the blobby shapes filled in with satin stitch in a couple of different colours to almost match the colours of the print underneath. I like to vary the angle of my satin stitches when doing things like this, it often looks more natural than keeping everything going in the same direction, and the light catches the threads differently which I prefer. Over the top of this fabric I had put down strips of other fabrics to hint at those gold tinged clouds I was nattering on about earlier, a tiger batik-esque print which I've just quietly edged with a single strand of back stitch and bullion knots in the same colour around all of the rough edges, and a ditsy floral print in yellow and cream which I've completely covered in french knots. The thread colours do match the fabric ones underneath so you can sort of still see where the flowers are overlaid in the print, but obviously it's just a jumble of texture now rather than a pretty floral fabric. 

The background batik looked a little empty after all of that so I've also added some single strand running stitch winding its way around the edges to give it a slightly more horizontal stripe look and to bring everything together.

Underneath is a polka dot fabric which I've worked diagonal back stitches in both directions over, using the centre of the dots as my reference points. It's been edged with quite chunky couched embroidery threads, all in the same colour but with each strand separated out first and then put back together so that they aren't twisted and will bunch and puff up a bit. 

I actually put down this yellow polka dot fabric in the hoop first to try and create a sense of perspective and the sun going down with all the cloud action in front. The deeper orange contrast colour is where the sun has sunk and given its last fiery glow, do you think that comes across or am I thinking in too much of a high and mighty manner? 

The couched thread edging has been repeated on top of the orange layer which is another floral and stem print that I've worked whipped back stitch over any obvious lines. The top few fabrics are quite busy and heavy looking so I wanted to balance them a bit with some simple patterns between the texture and the rocks. 

The rocks themselves have been textured with back stitches pulling the felt down to create cracks and crevices (literally stitching straight through the rock and the backing fabric) which I've then sort of filled in with french knots to match the felt colour, and some shiny seed beads in a few different colours and sizes for a pop of lightness. The top grey fabric has been simply textured with some two strand seed stitch, and edged with french knots in a slightly lighter shade of grey to match the lighter grey rocks, and the patterned fabric below has been worked on with a single strand of back stitch just to edge the pattern and keep it as it is pretty much. I have some black jute tape (like the stuff I've used in several kits like Woollydale II and Bluebell Garden) which I've cut into small strips and stitched across the centre, then deconstructed and fluffed up to be scrubby brush plants tucked in the rocks. 

It wasn't finished until November in the end but I think it was probably worth the wait! 

The total stitch run down for this piece is as follows; bullion knots, running stitch, satin stitch, back stitch, french knots, couching, seed stitch, whip stitch, beading and straight stitch. Simple stitches that rely more on the colours to create impact than the textures they themselves are making.