We are house sitting for my Grandmother at the moment which has been really lovely! With Baby Dotty due to arrive in the next couple of weeks it's been so nice just to spend some time with my lovely other half (as we're currently living with my parents) and has been a really relaxed place to start my maternity leave.
Of course I brought projects with me to do - the hoop containing the Bluebell and By the Ocean ATCs, a couple of books to read and some Dotty Textiles website projects to work on but I hadn't planned on what I would do once I'd done all of the above! I had no back up fabrics for the next project and was wandering around at a bit of a loose end yesterday morning - until I remembered that actually, I have a studio at the back of my Grandmother's house (a rather grandly named room in her garden shed) which has lots of fabrics in! What a numpty I am. Blame the baby brain for that one!
It's where I house a lot of the items I take to my workshops so I have my scrap baskets, bolts and rolls for potential kits that don't fit in my house, threads, hoops etc... I don't have large pieces of my backing fabric (calico) but I did find some of the cut up squares I use for workshops, once painstakingly cut into squares ready to go which I then had to stitch back together again to fit in the hoop I wanted to use.
I just about managed to get eight ATC shapes drawn in around the seam lines, I don't particularly want the extra chunky layers of calico so I'm having to work around them but it should be ok. A couple of corners are slightly lost in the edge of the inner hoop but I don't think I'll be stitching quite that close anyway until I come to add on the card backings.
I did have a little bundle of fat quarters and a gorgeous batik pack with me that I'd brought to start of the previous ATCs, and then I was able to combine that with some of the scraps from my scrap basket. The theme for the next set of cards is Summer Meadow and I researched for a little while online trying to come up with something. My vague idea was to do some close up daisies, as if you were lying in the meadow so that you were right alongside the flowers, and then try to make it appear like they were fading off into the distance, possibly by detached chain stitch flowers or even french knots getting smaller.
It was all starting off very green for the background as well but I couldn't make my scraps work as the shades didn't gel together nicely - until I found the blue/green batik print in the bottom left corner of the below picture. Suddenly certain scraps fell into place with it which is just a brilliant moment!
It was so hot sitting at the kitchen table yesterday with the sun beaming in through the open back door! I ended up having to close the door and blind and open windows instead to try and prevent getting sunburnt! Incredible weather and absolutely perfect to be creating summer meadows in.
My technique for laying down the first lot of fabrics can be a tad fiddlesome. Unless I've got a specific shape the background layers are just wiggle cut at about the right depth and width and then layered up on the front, whilst I'm holding the hoop up to the light looking at it from the back to make sure the template edges are covered. The fabrics are then stitched in the same way, with a running stitch worked around the box, following the lines and me flicking the hoop back and forward to make sure that the layers are getting stitched nicely, holding on to the fabrics at the front so that they don't fall off. Once one of the long sides is stitched then I can gently tug the fabrics across the shape so that they are lying flat to remove crinkles.
This then leaves the centre of the fabrics open if I were to slide more fabrics between the layers (like with the trees and beach huts) and means that I can see where my edges are whilst I am embroidering later on.
I did consider using a fusible film for my petals, but that I definitely didn't have in the studio and I was having too much fun to stop so instead I used the palest batik from the pack I had with me to cut some daisy petal shapes. Batik print fabric tends to be a much closer weave so is less likely to fray than your average quilters cotton. I love the little splashes of blue that are in these petals actually, they go really nicely with the slight blueish tint that's happening with the backing fabrics.
My plan is to have two white daisies with a fabric backing, with stems in this lovely contrasting green felt, and I've added extra stems which can either be just leaves, or I could perhaps add some pink Fox Glove type flowers (not that you necessarily find them in a summer meadow) for some colour contrast? The daisies themselves will be based on those ones which have the yellow centres as like little cones in the middle? Or are those not daisies after all? Whatever they are, the yellow will pop really nicely with the colours I've got already to add some summery colours to these ATCs.
I've tacked each petal on with one stitch down the middle, and also tacked on full length grassy strips which I will cut out the centre of where they cross over the flowers. This is much easier than trying to match up shapes either side of the flowers and means that the direction flows nicely and that I've got the tapering right. It looks a bit odd to start though! I've left most of the cards like this until I come to stitch each one down properly with embroidery threads so that the felt doesn't move or go too fluffy.
My evening fun was to start adding proper stitches to hold down the felt strips where I'd cut them on the first piece, and also to start protecting the edges of the daisy petals. Each stem has got a line of single strand back stitch up the centre to completely hold the stem down, and then long random straight stitches working their way around the blank felt to add texture. So far it's all been done in one colour but I might go back and add another colour of green to give some depth - maybe a darker colour?
The daisies presented me with a conundrum - I love the ethereal look of just the petals but I also love the splashes of blue and didn't want to cover those up with thread, although the edges do need securing. I settled on two strand blanket stitch going around each petal and actually I really love the look! It leaves all of the colours and the centres of the flowers free and open so keeps quite a delicate appearance. Once the yellow centres have been added (french knots obviously!) I'm hoping they'll look really good.
Now I just have to keep playing with needle and thread - what hardship!
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