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.