Barton in the Beans Stitchscape

 

In desperation I have turned to Googling interesting place names in England to find new and exciting names for my Stitchscapes. They are harder to come up with than the ideas for the pieces themselves - not that they especially need names but it's nice to be able to call them something when you want to refer to a specific piece. 

Today the name that stood out to me was Barton in the Beans, which is apparently a hamlet in the parish of Shackerstone in Leicestershire. According to Wikipedia (font of all knowledge) it has no shops or a pub (gasp!) but does have a church and a post box. So that's ok then. 

The reason Barton in the Beans stood out to me was because the petal beads I have used at the bottom of the piece do look a little bit baked bean-like when viewed from afar. They are really interesting beads from a newly discovered shop called Old Bicycle Shop who seem to specialise in slightly unusual ones in all sorts of odd shapes. The ones I've used here are called tulip petal beads and have the hole at the bottom, with a slight curve upwards like a petal. There are different types and shapes of petal bead which you can see in magnificent detail on the Old Bicycle Shop website - it's a dangerous place to look if you wish to keep your bank balance intact.  

I liked these ones because they almost looked like little marbles on the inside, with some areas clear and others milky. The curve makes the beads sort of fall and cower over but they perk up if you poke them with your finger so that's good fun. 

I have surrounded the petal beads with drizzle stitches to add height, and stacks of little green/petrol coloured matte seed beads to help add more texture. Any visible blotches from the batik fabric below have been filled in with satin stitch to give padded areas and the whole section is just a mish-mash of different things going on in a sort of haphazard way which I love. 

This piece was initially put together following a workshop as it was a leftover pack, and you can read more about the origins of the fabrics and the beads too, on a previous post of mine, here. 

It has quite a few layers but actually only four fabrics in, but with two fabrics put on as layers using both the front and back of the fabrics to see what the difference is. 

As all of the layers have been treated differently, I'm not sure now you would be easily able to tell that they were the same fabrics but it's an interesting exercise to try. Sometimes the back is more what you are looking for than the front is. 

Edging my bottom layer with the mad textures is a corded fancy trimming, which has caused some comments on a Facebook post I made saying that it reminded them of barbed wire fencing - not exactly the look I was going for. Personally I think of those woven living hedgerows made using willow branches or similar, and someone else commented saying that it looked like little decorative scalloped wire border fences that their grandparents had in the garden to separate the flowerbeds from the lawn. 

Everyone can always see something so different in these pieces and that's what art is about. It doesn't matter what I say it is, art is personal to everyone and you'll all look at it differently. Are you in the barbed wire fence, scalloped decorative border or woven living hedge camp? Or are you in a different camp entirely?

I've kept the fabric above quite simple and just used the lines that were already in the pattern, going around each of them with a single strand back stitch. To edge the fabric I've used a lovely hand dyed yarn from Lamington Lass, which appears in quite a few of my pieces at the moment, the colours just really speak to me and different bits of it work with different projects. 

The little snippet of fabric above that to the left is the same fabric but turned over. It's a much paler version as the print was only one sided on the fabric, but the tone kind of sits nicely with the other paler fabrics and mirrors more the paleness of the sky. To this I've blurred any remaining pattern lines with seed stitch and edged with french knots. 

My first big mountain took ages to do. I'm not sure why I fancied so many little seed beads on there, I was obviously having a blingy moment but I do really like it. The beads actually went on first, before any other stitches in this layer and I've tried not to be too uniform with it but to give a fairly evenish cover. Once the beads were on I've used a two different green colours to roughly fill in patches of the batik with satin stitch, concentrating on the larger splotches otherwise it would be too much thread and endless hours trying to cover every little pinprick. I like the effect that using two colours has - especially as it has coincided with a lightening of the fabric colour as well. It's like the sun has just peeped through the clouds on that one spot and lit it up. 

I've used two different colours of embroidery thread, split up and put back together to couch down on the edge of the fabric to finish the layer off. 

Batik fabrics are just so lovely. I have a real addiction to them and their colours and uniqueness. There are off course the slightly more twee versions which depict butterflies or elephants in slightly startling colour combinations but I favour the ones that are just different types of mark making and texture with more muted and relevant colours. The top mountain fabric I've used is very different to the lower one, it's less busy which makes it excellent to depict a mountain further away in this instance where you wouldn't see so much detail anyway. 

I have simply gone around the blotches with a single strand back stitch, and evened out the line by going over it again with a single strand whip stitch in the same colour. That's all this layer needed really, a step back from the mayhem going on in lower layers. 

To keep a clean edging I have again couched down embroidery thread, but this time using the same colour throughout and the same colour as the stitches within the layer. 

For my white sky I have used a single strand seed stitch on the lower level, edged with bullion knots (using two strands), and single strand running stitch on the upper level, edged with french knots (again two strands). Although the fabric is the same the front and back were slightly different colours so I have matched this with my threads as well - not that I'm entirely sure you would notice unless in good lighting. 

So there we are! My little Barton in the Beans Stitchscape. If you live in Barton in the Beans, I would love to know if there are any places around you that would resemble this little landscape scene or if it is just complete fantasy. 

My stitch run down for this one is; french knots, running stitch, bullion knots, couching, seed stitch, whipped back stitch, back stitch, beading, satin stitch and drizzle stitch. 

January Boundary Lines Swap

*Edited to add, this has been sitting in my drafts since the 7th February waiting for me to press publish! 

What a cracking start to the 2024 Stitchscape Swap. There are some familiar faces/styles, and some shiny new ones too which is rather exciting! It was actually quite comforting to see the envelopes plopping on the mat and recognising the handwriting; amazing how much of a kinship can be felt with someone that you've never met. 

I always hold my breath at the start of a new year in case no one wants to join in any more. The first few months and the last few months seem to have less participants in, but then it grows bigger in the summer when the days are longer and creative juices are pumping. 

These cards are amazing though and do exactly what it says on the tin - represent boundary lines!

The prompts for these cards included: Walls (through fields, buildings, up-close detail), fences (picket fences, chain-link etc), map lines, country or county boundary lines.

Some of these are more transient than others. There's nothing that says "a boundary" quite like a wall, so that's super obvious, but then sometimes if you are visiting in Wales, you can accidentally slip over the boundary into England without even noticing! Which happens to us fairly often when we go on family holidays down that way. 

These cards seem to cover all of those topics, we have wonderful chain link fences (made with chain stitch!), big stone walls and little stone walls, rough field boundary fences, houses and their hillside garden boundaries and an embroidered map! I wonder if the map was based off somewhere real or if it is made up? I love the little pine trees on it, it's almost like a treasure map - you can imagine Jack Sparrow saying to turn left at the group of three pine trees, wade through the river, then turn right towards the clump...

There are some lovely textures in these cards too, and lots of different stitches. I can spot fly stitch, bullion knots, running stitch, chain stitch, french knots, seed stitch, straight stitch, detached chain stitch (lazy daisies), blanket stitch, couching, back stitch and one which I'm sure is a named type of stitch but I can't think what it is, for the fence posts in the card below. 

They're lovely, absolutely lovely!

How tiny the back stitches are in the above card! It is such a fabulous texture though if you run your finger over it. 

I wish I had put in a gate. I saw this card come in the post and immediately got gate envy. It looks like it has been made with strips of dark brown felt which have then been stitched over to couch it down but also create a kind of wooden grain effect which is fab. 

Abi's card is so sweet with the little houses. She always has such wonderful little snippets of fabrics to make her cards with and I love that fancy yarn she's used for the bottom boundary and fabric edging. The sections of squared fluffy ends make fantastic hedges or Rhododendrons or something, and then the cord they are stitched onto or within is a great clipped edging. It's such a brilliant feeling when you have the perfect fabric or trimming for a project. 

And finally, Jackie's piece below looks almost like an oil painting in a National Trust house. The stitches and colours wash into each other and it merges and blends beautifully, but actually is quite intricate when you look up close at the tiny stitches. You can imagine it as a giant painting hanging on the wall of one of those massive swirling staircases can't you?

As always, individual photos are available to view on my website on the dedicated ATC page, as well as future themes and prompts if you need them. I hope you'll be inspired to have a go at next month's theme; Stepping Stones!

One Step at a Time

 

We've been feeling a bit under the weather in our house lately - lots of coughs and sniffles which just seem to be lingering forever. I can't work out whether these are new colds or the same one as before that's still hanging around. This time of year I just always feel so tired and this year I've got even more on my plate than usual which isn't helping but I find that I'm struggling to relax and take it easy when I can because the to-do lists for various things just never end and I feel guilty for not doing it and just overwhelmed by it all. 

As my lovely OH says though, you can only do what you can and just take things one step at a time. Which seems apt as February's Stitchscape Swap theme is Stepping Stones. 

I've gone for calming blue tones, using up some little mini samosas of fabric I picked up at the Ardingly Quilt show with The Mother at the end of January and the plan is to make my stepping stones from felt to meander through the water and lead you to the grassy bank and beyond. 

I love these colours together, and the grass print fabric works really nicely here too! I'll add more greens at the bottom as some kind of water rush type thing which will help balance the colour out. 

Even my stepping stones are blue! I have a large stash of small wool felt squares which I ordered online as a bundle from Billow Fabrics. They have really lovely colours, lots of soft tones, and you can pick up a mixed scrap bundle from their website which has stood me in good stead for a couple of years now! The range of colours is so broad that there is bound to be one in there that suits your project at any given time. I could do with another bundle now though to refresh some colours. 

I'm not planning on doing lots and lots of stitching in this one (she says!) but let the composition do most of the talking. There's no point my stitching in any water until after I've done my rushes at the bottom anyway so I'll see how it goes. 

I've started adding a little bit of a glimmer by using the shiny section of Stylecraft Moonbeam yarn to couch along the top edge of the bottom blue fabric. This is going down first and then I'm stitching my stepping stones over the top to blend it more into the background rather than it being a prominent edging. 

Each stepping stone is having different stitches in as well. So far the big bottom one has seed stitch all over it, the middle one is edged with blanket stitch and the top little one is just stitched down with a border of back stitch. 

We'll see how they turn out!

Boundary Lines ATCs

What would you think of if I said to you to draw a boundary? Would you go for brick walls and high fences, no entry signs, parking bays or a leafy green hedge? Perhaps it would be something less tangible like map lines or contour lines, invisible sectioning off of the world to make sense of it and take ownership. 

Maybe you're a sporting person and a boundary could be the rope around a cricket pitch, or lines drawn on the floor for football and basketball?

The official definition is "a line which marks the limits of an area" - which could be anything really! 

I decided to go for a rolling hills landscape (no real surprises there) with hints of different types of field boundary. At the top I've used a beautiful hand dyed wool from Lamington Lass doubled over and couched down to kind of represent a hedge line (maybe one of those living hawthorn woven hedges?), then the next level down I've used a skinny strip of dark felt to be more like a fence, and at the front I've used more felt to be a stone wall. I wish now that I'd also thought of putting in a gate, but the cards have already got quite a lot going on so perhaps it would have been too much anyway?

Starting at the top I've added some bunny runs by working a single strand running stitch following the line of the below fabric layer, then a single strand whip stitch perpendicularly across the rows. I love this technique and use it all of the time to make additional textures and jazz up a plain fabric. To me it represents animal tracks or a ramblers path, even the wind blowing grasses in different directions.

The next fabric down is actually a green trees print and I've vaguely followed the areas of brighter green with messy french knots. By messy I mean that I've deliberately not tensioned the knot as I made it, letting go of the thread before I pull the needle through so that loose loops or 'bunny ears' have been made and the knots look more like little bubbles (great for seascapes). 

It's a different look to the knot than, for example, the pink  flowers at the bottom of the card which have been made by tensioning the thread during the making of the knot, tightening the thread around the needle and sitting the knot on the fabric before pulling the needle through. 

To add texture to my felted fence I've stitched it down just by working straight stitches across it and I like the effect of the slight shine of the thread against the matte darkness of the felt. 

For the spotted fabric I've gone over each of the spots with satin stitch which gives them a raised, slightly padded effect. I always separate out all of my strands of the thread first when working a satin stitch, that way they don't tangle together so much in the needle and create a smoother stitch on the surface. 

Small, single strand, fly stitches have been added around these to represent scrubby grasses, and also to push back the fence line and give more perspective as they sit over the top of it. 

For my stone wall I have free stitched some back stitch stones into the felt, pulling fairly hard as I did so to try and give a quilted look to the wall. To bed this in and make it look like it's been there for ages, I have stitched some long straight stitch grasses (mixing two thread colours in my needle at once) which work their way up and over the stones. French knot tapers in pink give a different floral effect than my detached chain stitch daisy flowers; I have no idea what kind of flower they might represent in real life - probably not any that live in fields next to stone walls - but they look nice together. 

I've added little glass seed beads to the centre of each lazy daisy, and a more transparent type of bead to blend in more with the grass print background fabric, but to act as another type of little flower. 

The moss on the top of the wall is quite a dramatic moss! It sits fairly proud off the surface which doesn't quite work with my perspective of the flowers but I feel like a good stone wall needs a showy moss. I used three colours in the needle here and they are essentially a seed stitch (small and multi-directional) but the thread isn't pulled all of the way through the fabric and creates little loops. It can take some practice so get it even, and you will need to make a couple of normal stitches at the end to stop yourself accidentally pulling in all of your wonderful moss whilst knotting off the thread, but it's really fun to look at and touch. 

So, overall the stitch run down is; running stitch, whip stitch, couching, french knots, satin stitch, fly stitch, back stitch, straight stitch, moss stitch, detached chain stitch and beading. 

I'm quite pleased with my efforts for the first swap of 2024, and even more pleased that we still have lots of interest for there to even be a Stitchscape Swap 2024!! I hope you enjoy following along this year, whether you decide to participate or not.

Tiny Hoops

 

It was back to workshops at the end of January and I revisited Heffle Quilters in Punnetts Town, East Sussex, to work on little 10cm hoops for the day. They had no set theme requested but had previously been interested (at a talk given last year) in my Stitchscapes with shells in so had asked me to bring some along for the workshop. It's slightly tricker to put together packs of inspiration for workshops without a specific theme but I mixed together a selection of sea and coast and hillside fabric combinations in the hopes that there would be something for everyone. 

I enjoy making these packs. My system is to pull out fabrics from various stash sources which fit the bill, cut up lots of little pieces in the right size and then lay out all of the hoops (pre-backed) and start laying the fabrics on top, almost randomly, until the fabrics build up to the right quantity. Without thinking too much about it you can put together some interesting combinations which have different stories to them so, even though you've used the same fabrics, there is a different idea that could be interpretated in each. 

Of course, these combinations aren't set in stone and at my workshops I take round two big boxes of scrap fabrics (with the ultimate goal of making the scrap pile slightly smaller but it doesn't seem to be working as a stash busting method!) which can be substituted for or added in, and they can always swap between themselves. Sometimes people will also bring their own fabrics along if they've been inspired so it's a creative free-for-all with a little bit of initial direction. Half the time the packs are picked over with the same enthusiasm as seagulls around a sandwich and the ladies have got stuck in before I've had a chance to really explain what to do. It's nice to see such enjoyment from everyone and always bodes well for a creative day.  

I'd put together this little example piece for the workshop, and there's a rather embarrassing Instagram reel which you can find on my Instagram account (and Facebook page I think) of me putting it together if you wanted to watch it. I've used the same fabrics as from the selection provided to the Heffle Quilters and the same size hoop but it's always nice to show someone what you can do and the scale that can be achieved. Oddly, I haven't actually started stitching this one yet but I have started another piece which I began after the workshop as there was a fabric pack left over and I felt bad for it being unloved.

This is the second 10cm hoop I've been working on, and I've been experimenting more with combining the front and backs of fabrics. There are more fabric layers in this piece but it still only uses four fabrics. The top white fabrics show the correct side (with paste printed ditsy flowers) at the very top, and then the reverse underneath which is a slightly different colour and with no visible pattern as the paste print tends to be surface only and doesn't sink through the fabric. 

I've also used the zesty green circle print twice, cutting them into rolling hill shapes and layering them together, bringing the paleness of the creamy sky down a bit with the lighter shade of the reverse. 

Scrolling through Instagram the other day I came across an image posted by another textile artist who had just received an order of the most amazing looking beads. I followed her link and discovered Old Bicycle Shop who have fantastic shaped and unusual beads in the most amazing colours! My order arrived a few days later and I was keen to try out these glass petal beads. I think you're meant to use them to create beaded flowers but I've always called them pebble beads and used them in seascape type Stitchscapes as little rocks because they add such a wonderful texture and dimension. 

I was too excited to wait until after working on my stitching to add the beads so popped them in first which looks a bit odd in the below photo but it will be built up around those to help keep them upright and make them look less random. If you are a lover of beads, definitely check out Old Bicycle Shop!

When I've finished this little piece I'll go into more detail about what I've done on each layer - with better photos too, these have just been snapped on my phone at random points. I've been using it as my bus project so it's been stitched on my hour long Friday night bus journey, and accompanied me to Costa for my hour long early morning Costa stint on a Tuesday. (I end up doing admin on my phone for the other journeys.) I really treasure these two hours of the week as currently they're the only time I can stitch in the daylight. My occasional snatched moments of stitching in the evenings if I can get them are lit by the dayglow lamp and it's just not the same!

Last Friday I even managed to have a brief five minutes of the golden glow moment (which would not have reached me if I hadn't been sitting on the top deck of the bus). It made the beads in this little hoop sing and glow from within - how amazing!

The Stitchscape Shop

 

After a lot of late night slogging to choose products, compare prices, place orders, unpack and check in, cut fabrics to size and fold them neatly, photograph all products, load the products onto my website, work out prices, write descriptions, and start advertising it .... my Stitchscape shop is open!! 

But, I hear you say, you've had a shop for ages, why is this so special? Well! This is a branched out, extended shop which will now also have tools to help with your embroidery, not just Stitchscape kits and printed Stitchscape products. I am asked all the time to recommend needles, or overhear comments about people's struggles to find pretty things or specific tools so I am hoping to fill that void a little bit with my selections. 

A big discussion I have with people is about being able to see the needle and thread it. At every workshop or event someone will say that they have had to stop embroidering because they can't see to thread the needles or have trouble keeping their hands steady enough to poke the thread through. 

I have found these really nifty little beetle gadgets which will hopefully help a little bit with that. They are essentially a common needle threader with that little bit of wire that you poke the thread through, but the pretty casing means that the wire is protected (because you can easily damage a cheap threader), and it also houses an LED light which lights up as you push up the wire so the needle is illuminated! Plus it looks really sweet. Baby F is very taken with these, presumably because of their bright colours, and I have to keep reminding him that he can't have one. 

For smaller threads and needles I also have these hummingbird threaders. They have a protective cap, and the threader is more like a little crochet hook which you can fold the thread over to draw it back through the eye of the needle. It isn't a one size fits all threader as it won't help with anything chunky but for single strand work it's ideal!

I saw these gorgeous little parrot pouch scissors whilst I was 'shop' shopping and they popped into my basket as well. The blades are only small but would be fine for snipping threads and small bits of fabric - a great little travel pouch to keep your scissors secure if you're stitching on the bus (like me) or on the go. I just think they are super cute and I hadn't seen anything like them before. Available in two colours too!

Baby F is very intrigued by the whole photography process - I spent several evenings taking over the whole dining table with my light box trying to get the right angles of everything. I snapped a picture of him too and it's very exciting actually because he's only just started to pull himself up to standing and wanting to stand up - he's been a bottom shuffler all this time and not at all fussed with walking. Now he's just discovering a whole new level of things and our baby proofing is moving upwards like a tide line. Look at those gorgeous baby blues. 

These beads are really pretty too. I've got a matching set of either little flowers, which are so sweet, I might pilfer some for my own stash, or the bigger individual 'pebble' beads, which I think are actually called petal beads but I tend to use them as rocks so I've compromised on the name. What's nice is that you get two different colours (one opaque and one slightly clear) per tube so it's a nice variety. 

Similarly with the candy cane bead tubes. The beads are all glass but there are different sizes, some are lined, some seed bead, some bugle beads all mixed in together. I've picked out colours which I commonly reach for in my bead box, the greens, blues, autumn tones and bright yellows for flower centres. Rather than spending lots of money on one pack of a single bead, these are a great option to build up a little collection quickly. The tubes can be recycled afterwards as storage for your other beads too!

I tend to buy in lots of different trimmings and laces which might work for kits (tricky buying online as you'll appreciate!), but they don't always pan out for my intended design so I've added them to my shop. There are some french cotton guipure laces, lovely floral detailed ones, picot edged ones... I've got other trims too, all of which can be used as they are, deconstructed into other things or layered on top of each other. Have a play, see what you can create. 

All of the things in my shop are either useful, used or just really pretty, and one thing I knew I wanted to offer was little bundles of felt. I use felt a lot in my pieces, either as part of the design like tree trunks or flower stems or buildings, or to pad out areas (filling in shells), or to create stuffed rocks which can then be further embellished. 

These rolled wool mix felt bundles have also been chosen for their colour themes. I've gone for autumn (tree trunks), coastal (rocks or fluffy waves), moorland (heather) and more of an urban one which could have houses with red rooftops. 

I have got more practical things; a selection of needles, which isn't the full range of ones I'd like to offer but lean more towards the bigger eyed needles like crewel and tapestry. Personally I prefer smaller needles like sharps or betweens so I'd like to have those too as an alternative eventually. Having a variety of needles is a good idea because it can depend what you are stitching through, or stitching with, or even what embroidery stitches you are making, all of which might need a different needle.

Previously I've always only sold hoops with kits (apart from in 2020 during the lockdown where I put them in my Etsy shop as people were taking up new hobbies and they went bonkers and got posted out to all sorts of countries! 

Eventually I took them off again, as the hoops were selling by the bucketload and I couldn't keep up, but it seems about time that I offer hoops on their own - this time with a bigger range of sizes, from 7.5cm to 20cm. They are my favourite brand, a UK make called Elbesee, with screw top fasteners which make the hoops really easy to tighten, and a nice quality finish. (Apart from the smallest hoop which is an interloper and a different brand - but still very nice!)

I've also decided to clear through my stash of fabric bolts. I'm a terrible fabric hoarder, especially of batik fabrics, and my eyes are bigger than the size of my storage space. I had more bolts of fabric sitting unused waiting for a moment in the sun than I realised and they are no good going unappreciated. Quite a lot of them are my soul colours, blues and greens with the odd purple and orange for contrast. 

I just love the variety of them! 

Anyway, they are available in fat quarter sizes, most of them folded up into pretty samosas. Some are longer and thinner than others because the fabric width varies but it's about the same square meterage for each. 

I'm very excited and pleased about my little collection of goodies. They are all available on my website, and I'm going to keep it on my website (dottytextiles.com) rather than share it to Etsy. I will also have a little travel pack of items to take with me to talks and events as well so interested persons can build up a whole pack of goodies to complement a kit perhaps...

Obviously it's all very new and shiny with only a small selection of items. If there are any items you think I should consider adding to the shop please do let me know, and I would really love it if you would have a gander through my online shelves and see what's on offer. Link here!