Northern Lights ATCs

These cards have not turned out the way I thought they would. In my mind they were a lot more green when finished but I was following the colours of the fabric underneath and it all ended up a lot more orange/pink than anticipated. Which is fine, I don't dislike them but it doesn't quite match where I thought I was going - which I should have realised at the fabric picking stage!

Most of my time on these was spent with the light show part, and I have completely covered the fabric underneath with threads, mixing up the colours in my needle as well to try and get a sense of lots of dancing colours. 

I have seen the Northern Lights myself, but I'll be honest and say I was a bit disappointed. Either it wasn't a particularly good night to see them, or they are pitched to be a tad more exciting than they are.... I don't know. As I recall the colours weren't actually in the sky. It was a white misty stuff that looked like a stray cloud but, if you had your camera settings correctly, the colour appeared all in the photo. Hold tight a moment whilst I look out my photos of the event.....

Please hold.....

Holding....

Ah, here we go!

These photos were taken at about one in the morning in Iceland, in the freezing cold, surrounded by literally hundreds of other freezing cold people all with cameras. Tripping over tripods and getting blinded by accidental camera flashes. It wasn't at all romantic. We had been told on the coach ride over to our location (the middle of nowhere) what settings to put our cameras on so we were all ready to go, but had to wait for about 3 hours before anything appeared. Myself and my friend had given up and gone and sat back in the coach to try and get some feeling back into our limbs when this cry came up all around the coach carpark and people were racing out of their coaches to the ridge where the cameras were set up. Excitedly we joined suit but, as I say, the only colour appeared in the photos and it was underwhelming to say the least. (The orange in the below photo is also light pollution, not a part of the lights themselves.)

Anyway, I digress. The fabric print used was a large scale, slightly abstract, design with lots of colours in and I thought it would work nicely to create different lines and layers in the piece. I've followed the colours (mostly) underneath and worked satin stitches, although did vary the directions of the stitches in some places. Each 'colour' is actually two strands of thread in a slightly different colour which is possibly more visible in the blue/green combination, or a variegated perle thread. I like the effect it creates rather than just being one solid colour each time. 

I've tried to add a little bit of sparkle for pizazz by adding long straight stitches in a metallic thread that shoot through the lights and upward into the sky above. 

The layer underneath has been edged with two strands of coton perle in black couched down with a single strand of a coloured thread so that it stands out and again has that linear look like some of the light streaks are lower and less in one block. 

Tiny french knots have been added to some of the spots of the pattern to add in a little bit of texture but I didn't have enough time left (or the will to do so really) to add a one strand, one twist french knot in every single spot. That's the joy of using a pre-printed fabric, it doesn't matter when you leave sections unstitched. 

A fine cord has been couched to the edge of the layer underneath and at the bottom I've just added little clusters of two strand straight stitch stems in black, then gone over and created a front and back row by changing the colour of additional stems - one row in orange and one in blue. In the front row I've also added an extra line to the coloured stems in metallic thread to bring the sparkle down from the sky. These colours almost glow like neon signs among all of the black here but my intention was to have them almost reflecting the colours above (a bit like when plants are tinged white if in moonlight). 

Two colour french knots have been popped at the bottom of the stems to give them some ground to grow in and I've just left it there!

I've tried mixing up my threads in these cards, I've got stranded Anchor cottons, coton perle threads and metallic threads all jumbled in there together adding slightly different textures and thicknesses. 

Whilst I like the effect that's been achieved, I think if I were to have another crack at them I would try and change the colours a bit - less orange and more blues and greens. Maybe also have less of an 'edge' to the lights and try to stagger the top edge a little bit so that it fades more than just stops. But I don't dislike the cards and that's the main thing! They are certainly very punchy to look at. 

The stitch run down for these ones is short and sweet; satin stitch, straight stitch, couching and french knots.