Starting Layers

I thought I'd quickly chat about how I start my ATC designs for anyone who might want a little advice on it. Personally I tend to start all of my cards in the same way. I have a little think about the theme, possibly a quick Google or Pinterest to make sure the ideas in my head would work and get some inspiration on composition or colouring, or confirm shapes, and then I pull out a large handful of fabrics from my stash that might fit with the theme. 

I have been enjoying making little motifs with felt and, although several of the themes imply a large scene, I prefer to zoom in on one aspect and kind of focus on it. In this case, for Snowdrop Carpet, I wanted one or two big Snowdrops at the forefront and felt would be the perfect material to use for this as it doesn't fray, is easy to stitch, provides coverage from fabrics underneath and is another texture to add in. You can also use it to add little padded sections.

I don't tend to sketch ideas first, or do any planning, but because I make multiple cards in case something goes wrong with the swap and we need an extra couple to send out, I will sometimes need templates. For the Snowdrops I have drawn around the ATC backing card for the size, then drawn my main motif onto that so that I can create templates for the pieces to be cut out. Initially my drawing had two Snowdrops on each card but in practice, after cutting out, one flower was better. 

The design might change as I'm stitching and looking at the cards, thinking about what I might add next so you'll see that later on I've decided to add additional stems as the single stem was just too lonely and it needed something else at the front to balance the composition. 

I've just started the next set of cards for the Morning Chorus theme and I know that I want to include a Blackbird in it as I've been working really hard to create a balcony garden in our new home (which was completely barren and boring) with pots of primroses, ivy, daffodils, hyacinths, rosemary, lavender, mint, hydrangea....not everything is up and at 'em yet and some of them might be a slow burner as it's windy and cold on our balcony (actually a posh fire escape we use as our front door), but there is enough to look nice for this time of year. For Christmas I asked for bird feeders to add which I have securely cable tied to the railings and the first bird we got to visit was a Blackbird! Who now comes every day with his missus to see what Little F and I have put out as an offering. We do also get a lot of Jackdaws so can't put too much food out at a time, but we are trying to expand our bird range and have little seed feeders too. In the spring I'll try putting up a trellis with a climbing plant to provide more cover to help attract the little birds. 

But I digress, sorry - I'm very excited about getting birds in my 'garden'! 

At the Ardingly Quilt show I collected some fabrics that I thought would go beautifully with the Morning Chorus theme, a little bit like the colours you get in the Pride & Prejudice film with Keira Knightly, you know the scene I mean, purples and greys with a touch of glowing orange. 

These backing fabrics tend to just be roughly wiggle cut to fit four different ones over the space of the card. Unless I need a specific shape for mountains etc, they usually just provide a pretty backdrop, much like a colour wash at the back of a watercolour painting. Each one will be different due to the part of wiggle that they get, or the difference in the pattern. 

I've shown before that on the back of the hoop I draw around the card backing so I know the space I'm working with. Once I've chosen my fabrics and they are cut ready to go, I layer these up on the front and hold them in place with my fingers whilst I make large tacking stitches around this outline so that on the front I can see the size of the card due to the rectangular stitched shape. It's a bit of hoop flicking to check front and back at once but worth it afterwards.

I think for the rest of the card I will do an upright log out of felt in a dark colour and then try to make the Blackbird mostly out of fabric as I have a really pretty one with little speckles on it (that's probably more like a Starling but never mind!). 

I tried a couple of compositions for the bird as you'll have seen above but decided I preferred the right one as it is slightly larger pieces of fabric needed for the shape which is less fiddly and therefore likely to fray less. 

I just have to figure out how I'm going to do the feet! And actually get cracking on proper stitching.