Stitchscape Swap Bluebells ATCs

It took me a little while to get round to photographing and swapping these May cards out as I was waiting for the last one to arrive and it got held up in the post with the bank holiday/Jubilee celebrations. Did you do anything to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee? We went to our town's lighting of the beacon on Thursday which was a lovely affair with a bagpipe player, brass band, singing groups etc. The beacon was lit by the town Mayor and the High Sheriff of East Sussex (and then the town crier because he's about eight foot tall and could reach the log pile better)! We also went to a fete organised by a local team which involved stalls, performances and an opening flag parade with local school children and the Rainbows, Brownies and Guides. Hilariously, the parade was delayed by 45 minutes as a swarm of bees decided to grace us with their presence and landed on a bin bag just outside the arena so we all had to wait for a local bee keeper to arrive and rescue the swarm - cue many hilarious puns about the 'Queen' bee coming to visit for the Jubilee!

But anyway, I have been really excited to see these cards together for a very blue affair! I love how there are many people who have gone with the traditional Bluebells and Silver Birch trees (including myself) but how they are all so different! Some trees are just embroidery, some cleverly made out of strands of yarn, some within a fabric print and some made from fabric. It will be interesting to see how the September theme of 'Woodland Walks' will be interpreted as a few of these Bluebell Woods  have the most darling little pathways going through them! Even the October theme, 'Autumn Blaze' could be  interpreted in a woodland path (my love of the woods may have overpowered the themes for these swaps!) with fiery colours above it. 

We have an American participant for the swap and I hadn't thought about the lack of Bluebells in other parts of the world - she had to look up inspirational images on Google! (Her piece is the single white tree with little flying birds and french knot flowers.) If you are reading this from outside of the UK, do you have Blubells where you live?

There are lots of knots in these cards actually; I went with the longer bullion knot but I love all of the ways french knots have been used by the others - it's all so neat too! It was a real struggle to choose my favourite from this bunch, although I was slightly helped by making sure not to pick a card by someone I already have a card from - it would mess up my chart as I'm keeping notes of who gets cards by whom so that it's a different person each time. 

Individual photos for each of these cards have been added to the photo album on my website if you wanted to have a look and I've got some close ups of my favourite bits below!

Thank you to everyone who has been joining in with this swap, I am still having so much fun! I can't believe we are nearly halfway through the themes already. Once we have the June cards in and swapped out I'll do a 6 month review of the cards I've made and also the ones I've kept to see what my collection looks like together.