The Allotment Garden ATCs

These cards were a little bit experimental as I wanted to create an actual greenhouse in my allotment but wasn't entirely sure how to make them. I've documented my creative thinking for these in several previous blog posts so hopefully you can follow along but to summarise, I stitched my plants 'inside the greenhouse' onto the fabric layer and then cut out an identical shape from a plastic strawberry punnet and stitched that on top, adding additional details of the framework and door in long stitches which has really added a 3D element to the building. And I'm really pleased with it!

The plastic wasn't the easiest to stitch through, and I had to be really careful about punching too many accidental holes into it as they were then really obvious. It was fairly thick so you had a little bit of time to bring your needle up through the fabric and see where it was before going through the plastic layer, but most of my holes were created either beforehand or on the downward direction. The nicest thing, I think, is that shadows are cast by the threads lying on the top which makes it actually quite lifelike.

Thanks to my ever changing schedule, I'd noticed on previous collections where I was trying to fit two month's worth in one hoop that I was getting slightly stressed about finishing them on time. It was great then being more than a month ahead but it could get a little bit tight and squeaky on the first deadline so for this one I've just made the allotment cards in a smaller hoop and that has worked out well. I'm still making four cards rather than two so that I have a couple of back ups in case anything should go wrong with the post or someone joins in too late for the theme but still wants to join in. 

I like the backs of these cards, you can still make out the greenhouse shape and the plants in the pots - it's a really abstract, linear drawing (the kind my college teachers would be loving and I'd have to photocopy the back of for my sketchbook). 

Stitching the card backs on was a little bit tricky. I pre-punch the holes in the cards anyway to try and keep my stitches regular, but this time round I also had to pre-punch holes in the plastic as well. My method was to stitch at least two other sides as normal so that the card was in position, and then punch straight through my card holes (and the space outside of the card that I would need to stitch through) through the plastic with a pin, then I had a smooth and neat journey down that card side. The only thing I didn't like was that the plastic became slightly prickly but I think we can live with that. 

It doesn't take that long to stitch the backs onto the cards which is handy as I can usually get some done whilst Baby F naps, or in the evenings when he's in bed. If it's a nap then the house is in chaos, toys everywhere, I'm probably still in my pyjamas and quietly inhaling as much coffee as possible. 

So, working down through each layer, my top sky layer has got a couple of rows of single strand running stitch following the edge of the layer below just for some texture, and three fly stitch birds coming to eat my pea shoots. The dark green fabric has been covered in single strand back stitch around every line of the pattern where I could see it - it's a batik so some of the lines were a bit wishy washy - and edged with couched yarn. 

The layer underneath has a gold metallic sparkle to it already and I've slightly covered that in a green, two strand, seed stitch; not bothering to edge it separately as the stitches have been taken over the edge to stop any fraying and I wanted a flat surface for my bean poles to sit on. 

The brownish/green fabric at the bottom hasn't really had any texture stitches added because they're all stitches for the image. 

My allotment garden is based around the greenhouse and rows of canes with beans on. The poles themselves have been stitched with a lovely hand dyed yarn that I've wiggled through the fabric layers. Because of the nature of the dye, the poles are all different colours which I thought was nice, although some are perhaps slightly too green and light? Not sure. 

The beans have been made with two strands of a variegated yarn in feather stitch, and the little flowers made with mixed strands of orange and red as french knots. 

Brown soil has been added to the bottom as brown french knots scattered in any spaces, grasses added to the pathway up to the greenhouse just with tall fly stitches, then horizontal stitches added to create that path, and pebbles as french knots. 

The fabric for the greenhouse was stitched down initially with blanket stitch and a door added in a different fabric stitched with just that single row of back stitch you can see through the 'glass'. When I stitched down the plastic I went over those blanket stitches in my thicker thread which I then wove long stitches through and over to give the outer frame and to hide the plastic edge. Repeated long stitches were used to build up the impression of the door (over the edge of the fabric underneath) and framework. 

The table and plant pots were added before the plastic and for those I freehand stitched a satin stitch table and two plant pots, adding a couple of long stitches across the top of the pots to hide my stitched edges. The plant on the table reminds me a bit of a Christmas Cactus and has been made with chain stitch - these were also freehand branches so some of them look slightly strange I think at odd angles. The big vine plant had a single strand, back stitch, vine framework stitched first as I wanted it to look like it was getting wrapped around the greenhouse frame, then detached chain stitch leaves worked along for the leaves. 

I have been asked to draw up a little pattern for this greenhouse so I will do my best to come up with something that will just be a little PDF download on my website to get templates I think. Not sure when I'll get round to that though!

So, for these cards the stitch roundup is; fly stitch, running stitch, couching, back stitch, french knots, seed stitch, feather stitch, detached chain stitch, chain stitch, satin stitch, straight stitch and blanket stitch (although that's now hidden). Not one single bullion knot!! That's very unlike me.