Dotty Textiles: The Full 2022 Stitchscape Swap Collection!

In my last post I said how amazing it was that at the beginning of last year I put out a suggestion on my Dotty Textiles social media pages, tentatively enquiring whether anyone would be interested in making two cards a month on a set theme, with a view to swapping with anyone else who sent a card in. I wasn't at all sure that there would be enough interest and was about 60% certain that it would fall completely flat and only have two people say they'd like to join.

Imagine my absolute surprise and joy when I had an initial response of about ten people! It doesn't seem very many considering how many people follow the pages and how many lovers of embroidery and textiles there are out there, but ten was a viable number to start up a swap and I was absolutely thrilled. The enjoyment I get from receiving these cards is huge, looking at them closely to try and figure out how the stitches were made, feeling the different textures and layers that have been included. The swap is open to everyone from all skill sets and all comfort levels but I think that this makes it all the more interesting - even the simplest of stitches can be astounding and brilliant, part of the challenge is keeping these pared back so that they fit into a normal envelope, which can be restricting for certain techniques and, due to their size, composition is often key. Just because they are small doesn't mean they are easy to make, and often take an amazing amount of time depending on how complicated and involved you get into the process, but at the end of it all, it should be fun!

They are a wonderful way to try a new technique, or to use up your small scraps and can make you step out of your comfort zone a little to try and find the perfect material to use to create the image in your head (or from your paper if you are a sketcher first).

I don't know if I've stepped that far out of my comfort zone, I have a style and like to think it's fairly recognisable, but I enjoyed coming up with the idea of using a hole punch to create leaves from paper for the Autumn Blaze theme, and using felt in different ways to create shapes or pad sections out.

I like landscapes so most of mine are landscape themed, and I've kept all of the cards as portrait so that they fit together as a set so that I can see the change in seasons and potentially in colours. I designed the cards as each month came up so they haven't been made to fit together, I was just curious to see if they would and I think they do.

I have been hugely invested in this swap I have to admit, and still am. It has been a strange year for me being on maternity leave for most of the time and, especially just after Finley arrived, when I didn't know which way was up or what day it was - having this swap to run gave me a sense of the outside world when most of my world was centred and concentrated on this tiny being. It's been harder than I thought it would be to suddenly not be able to stitch whenever I wanted to and for things that used to take me a day to finish, suddenly taking weeks because I have to be someone else's world and everything else takes a back seat.

I don't begrudge this time at all, it has just been nice to keep a little something back for me and to have a reason to sit down in the evenings when all is quiet and sew these little cards. The house may be a complete mess from the day's activities and there might be a hundred other chores I'm meant to be doing, or I might have been in my dressing gown all day and not brushed my hair for two - but these cards have represented me time, and that's what I'll think of when I look at them.

Embroidery as a hobby is a bit like that anyway, it creates a breathing space in your head whilst your hands slowly create a wonderful image in front of you. It's a methodical and steady process, which forces you to just sit and be still, zone in on what you are doing and take time for you. In a way it's similar to yoga, just without the exercise part!

I really hope that when the other members who joined in with the 2022 swap look at their own collections they have their own memories intertwined with the cards they have created, and that it has been peaceful and enjoyable for them too!

This set of gorgeous cards are the ones that I have ended up with from each swap. Obviously a perk of being the host is that you can often choose the ones that you really love or intrigue you first, but I also had to be fair and go with my spreadsheet (what a lifesaver that spreadsheet is!) because I had promised that everyone would have a card from a different person each month. That isn't to say that I don't love all of these cards - it was often a hard choice to make and I would pick out several ones, then turn them over and consult my spreadsheet to see if I could have one of them. These have all be chosen for a specific reason.

Toward the end of the year, as people started dropping out for various reasons, I did have to send out cards that some may have had a card from before, but I made sure that it was as early on in the year as possible so it wasn't consecutive. I love that I could generally start to tell who cards had been made by before I even looked at the back of the card, some people seemed to really grow in confidence through the swap and some already had a distinctive style. Others used the opportunity to play with different techniques every month so you weren't quite sure who the cards were by.

From left to right, the cards are by:

Top Row: Diane, Sarah, Lon, Suzi

Middle Row: Jacquie, Tracy, Linda, Sandra

Bottom Row: Abi, Suzi, Sarah, Tracy

(And I've just realised that for the monthly themes the firework and pumpkin pieces are the wrong way round!)

I love the differences in these cards. They feature machine stitching, stumpwork, painting, fabric dyeing, collage, real shells, hand embroidery... All of them are playful and fun to look at with so many textures! I can't take enough photos of them to try and show you the different layers and weights of thread, types of thread, trimmings used in fun ways. They are just beautiful, plain and simple.

This is the whole collection from 2022 (cards all in the right order now), both sides of the story merged, my cards and the cards I swapped for. It's almost like a temperature blanket, don't you think? Divided in half diagonally, the bottom left corner has rich earthy colours with bright oranges and deep blues, but the top right corner has pale yellows and blues with silvery tones.

I would love to see what the other collections look like - do they all fit together and work as a collection? Are there any clashing cards?

I'd also like to know that the favourite months or themes were - and from you too, which month did you enjoy seeing the most? Was there a stand out collection?

A reminder of the themes:

January: Snow Capped ..... February: Winter Sun ..... March: Daffodils/The Coming of Spring

April: Rainbow Showers ..... May: Bluebells ..... June: By or Under the Ocean

July: Summer Meadow ..... August: Sunset Mountains ..... September: Woodland Walks

October: Autumn Blaze ..... November: Starry Night Sky ..... December: Festive Greenery

I've currently got mine stored in these ATC folders from Papermania. I don't know if they are still making these, I came across a couple of empty folders from the ATC days of 2011 so I've utilised those. These cards would look fantastic framed though! If you had a big frame and float mounted them so that they stood out, it would look really lovely. Has anyone got any other plans for their cards?

I'll have to show you some of the cards I discovered from 2010/2011 in their folders. The Mother has been clearing out cupboards in her house and in one of them she discovered three folders stuffed full of ATCs, I've also got photo albums of the postcards that we also made, as well as a box of inchies! I think we'll stick to ATCs for now though.