December Festive Greenery ATC Swap

 

Last week I was finally able to swap these wonderful last entries to the 2022 Stitchscape swap and get them sent out to their new homes, completing collections of artwork up and down the country (and in the USA!).

I don't know what I thought would come out of the theme idea 'Festive Greenery' but I love the variety that is shown in these cards. So many different representations of what people think of with those two words. Festive doesn't necessarily mean Christmas; to me it is when the clocks go back and it starts getting dark all of the time, the last plants hanging on and making the outside green are the evergreens like holly, ivy, pine, fir, mistletoe, rosemary, laurels... 

These are the ones that start appearing in houses, on doors, in vases, in table displays and on mantlepieces, taking your mind off of the bare branches and stark colours outside your window. It's been this way for hundreds of years with many cultures using the signs of life in winter as a way to look forward to the oncoming summer and giving thanks for another year. 

I don't know that we are so connected to nature in the way that our ancestors were, and had to be, our vegetables come from the shops and we can have non-native blooms delivered through letterboxes by the postman, rather than having to rely on what we could grow or cut down to use as tools or firewood for warmth, light and as a way to cook. But the traditions that they started still carry on, we still bring in trees to our home to decorate and create wreaths for our doors - even if they don't hold quite the same meaning for all. 

In these delightful cards there are representatives of many of these things, I went with mistletoe but we also had holly, in both a decorative pattern (like wrapping paper) and a close up branch complete with vivid knot berries. Christmas trees (too hard to tell if they're pine or spruce!) also featured in two very distinctive styles, and several wreaths! All of the wreaths have been created so differently though - a delicate embroidery on a door, a more textural wreath with possibly crocheted leaves(?), a feature wreath with lovely detached chain stitch flowers, and a wreath featuring a fabulous toadstool! 

I actually have created a couple of wreaths in my time which had little clusters of tiny faux toadstools so I particularly liked this one as a reminder of that. 

The pink front door with the orangey brown brickwork lends a pop of colour to these cards. Red and green do feature quite heavily but these are surprisingly colourful with blue, yellow, orange, red, white, gold and silver. I was envisaging more green I think when I look back at some of the obvious colour themes that have come out of previous months, and with the word 'greenery' in the theme title. 

This has been a really lovely theme to end on and I just wanted to thank everyone again for taking part in this swap. I'll probably say it again in upcoming posts where I look at the whole collection but, for an idea that sparked whilst I was sitting alone in my living room, to suddenly being a whole completed year of artistic pen pals and a collection of fabulous stitched artwork, it's just amazing!!