The final theme for the 2022 Stitchscape Swap is Festive Greenery and I ummed and aahhed about what sort of greenery to do; holly, ivy, Christmas trees (with lights/without), wreaths... but I settled on Mistletoe in the end and I couldn't really tell you why, it just felt right!
I love spotting those big balls of Mistletoe high up in the trees, there are quite a few just over the county border from us in Kent and they are super distinctive, almost like nests!
As always when starting an ATC hoop, I drew out all of the card shapes on the back first. I make extra than what is required for the swap so that I have back ups in case something dire should happen in the swap itself. (Apologies in advance for the strange colour in the photos - I started late at night and the photos are all from my phone.)
For the Mistletoe I drew out templates for the shape and, as I wanted to layer up colours to create extra dimension, drew around the templates onto my chosen green fabrics. I could have opted to strengthen the fabric with a fusible film but that would have involved getting out the iron and I was too excited/impatient to go for that extra step.
The background fabrics are quite soft, greyish hues with little splashes of green so that they would compliment the green of the leaves but not overpower them. Plus they look a little frosty which goes with the season. My backing fabrics are just slightly wiggle cut so there are no templates or precision cutting, I tend to just cut a long strip off the fat quarter I'm using, wiggling the line slightly as I go, and then trim it into four pieces so that it fits the card with some overlap.
My technique is slightly fiddly to start but I layer the fabrics on the front as I want them (one card at a time) and then hold them on with my fingers whilst turning the hoop so that I can see the drawn lines on the back. These lines are stitched along with tacking stitches so that from the front when I'm actually embroidering, I know where the edges of the card will be. Once the fabrics are tacked down then its much less fiddly but initially there is some hoop turning to keep an eye on the front whilst actually stitching from the back.
I mixed up the direction of the Mistletoe templates and which colour went on top so that the cards would all be different. Because of the shape I could also overlap some bits so rather than having one Mistletoe layer plonked on top of another, they are woven and interlaced so it looks much more natural and I really like that effect.
For the stitching I kept things simple and I've just gone around the edges with blanket stitch. I needed something that was quite quick and gave a lot of support to the fabric to prevent fraying whilst also looking nice.
Berries have been cut out of white felt and stitched on with a single strand of floss in back stitch and I've added some sparkle in with silver metallic highlights. The silver has been picked up again as I've used a single strand in back stitch around the most obvious shapes of the batik background (third fabric down) just to bring a discreet sparkle to these cards. It is a festive theme after all!
The rest of the stitching is very simple and minimalistic (unusual for me), the leaf print fabric is just edged in pale grey french knots, the batik fabric has a bluish embroidery thread couched down at the top of the layer to hide the rough edge, and the bottom layer has been edged with bullion knots with a simple running stitch worked around the outline of the leaves in that layer.
So, aside from removing the tacking stitches and stitching on the cardboard backing - these cards are done and that brings an end to my 2022 themes! I can't believe we've gone through all twelve themes already. How time flies.
No comments:
Post a Comment