Summer Meadow Take Two

 

I previously posted that I wasn't too keen on the first attempt for my Summer Meadow Stitchscape Swap ATCs. There isn't anything wrong with them as such, they just aren't quite right to me and I'm not really sure why. I wanted to have another go to see if I could make more of a Summer Meadow vibe and I'm really pleased with how these ones have turned out! Maybe it's because they have so much more yellow in? They kind of look more summery just with the choice of colours. 

I really like the fabrics in these actually. It didn't take me too long to put them together - green and yellow aren't a tricky combination, although the shade of green can be hard to match if you go down the more yellowy green line. Not all greens will sit comfortably with each other. 

But happily I had a couple of greens that are very comfortable in each other's presence, and that matched a green scrim piece I had that I wanted to use for additional texture. 

Funnily enough the landscape in this piece changed as I was stitching it. My original plan had been that these would all be different fields working their way back to the distant sky - the yellow striped fabric being almost a field of planted wheat or something which would have tiny french knot poppies or cornflowers in. 

Once I had stitched all of the layers though, the way I have stitched the circular yellow fabric has turned the big circles in the print almost into suns, which then automatically turned the two yellow pieces into part of the sky! Do you see what I mean? So when I added the fly stitch birds to the pale grey fabric that was originally the only intended sky piece, I popped them a bit lower over the edge of the stripey yellow. I guess in the height of summer sometimes in the evenings you get that 'golden glow' which gives a slightly yellowish appearance to the sky so that's what I've unwittingly done here!

My wheatfield/sky layer has been really simply treated with a single strand of stem stitch to give a slightly raised texture and a lovely two-tone yarn has been couched to the top which actually helps give a sort of fluffy cloud texture I suppose, although that's not what I had initially intended. 

The yellow spot layer was also not intended to be like a sun and I haven't deliberately positioned any of the circles in a particular location, they are just as cut out of the fat quarter, but they work really well! I've gone around the circles with two strand back stitch, and then worked rows of running stitches around those circles in a single strand, almost like ripples in a pond where the circles start to overlap each other. 

This fabric layer has been edged with a harder line of couched embroidery threads in two colours, slightly twisted so that you see both colours but not so that it is a bobbly texture on the edge there. 

In my previous Summer Meadow post I was talking about the clear/pink sequins I had used to provide some light and act like those sparkling flashes you get and I've sort of unintentionally re-created that here with this lovely green fabric and the golden print circles on the print itself! They also remind me of the dust particles reflecting the light in those golden evenings and so I haven't touched these at all just worked two strand seed stitch around them to leave them as they are. Lots of unintended things came together in harmony here!

The bottom fabric was mostly plain but with slightly mottled print over the top so it didn't really matter that I've mostly covered this with my cotton scrim which I picked up at a fair a few years ago. It has been hand dyed and has really lovely colours running through it so I use it in a lot of projects! I've added some additional texture with rows of running stitch using a single strand of a variegated thread that goes over any uncovered areas of the fabric and slightly up into the scrim to hold the edges. They aren't neat stitches by any means, just adding some extra areas of interest and light/shadow where the colour changes. 

The flowers are very simple too. As I was stitching the background I was envisaging a riot of colours with lots of different types of flowers and shapes but when it came down to it I felt that the brighter yellow wouldn't work all that well with a rainbow of colours and that, actually, an ecru would be the best to offset the darker green and help bring down some of the paler colours of the sky. 

I remembered that in my stash I had some slightly unusual sequins that I recently cut off a fabric sample I was given with machine embroidered flower sequins - the greyer tones match the sky and the darker blues contrast really nicely with the yellow so I'm chuffed I actually went to the effort of snipping these sequins off the swatch and keeping them - you never know when these things could come in handy!

The contrast between these two cards couldn't be greater! Both from the same initial theme too - which one says Summer Meadow to you more?

The stitch run down for these cards is; fly stitch, couching, stem stitch, back stitch, running stitch, french knots, seed stitch, straight stitch and beading. 

So now that the hoop is full and finished I am stitching the backs onto them using specific card pieces that I've bought in (so posh) and punched the holes in ready with a pin and ruler. It makes it much easier to have these holes ready to go rather than trying to make them whilst stitching. 

I just use ordinary white sewing cotton and go through the fabric with an over stitch to secure everything together then, when all of the cards are on, carefully cut them out leaving a couple of millimetres from the whip stitch and sign and date the cards! 

They often look quite different when tidied up and trimmed so I'll do another blog post when they're done.