Cherry Blossom ATCs

So. Many. French. Knots!!!!

Need I say more really? The knots kind of took over on this one but I'm thrilled with the final effect. Mr DT has a thing about Japan (it's his top No. 1 place to visit when we get rich enough to go...if we ever get rich enough to go) and I've previously painted him a picture with a pagoda and blossom trees so I was kind of going for a Japanese sculpted blossom tree look. A bit like a blossom bonsai tree. 

The fabrics were easy to choose for once, I wanted them to be bright and springlike, and I haven't really stitched them at all as there's so much gone into the trees themselves. I've added a single strand running stitch detail on the green, edged with blanket stitch, and then just edged the bottom fabric with bullion knots, but again in the green as that space dyed batik look had so many colours in, adding a line of running stitch in the top of that layer to help support the edge before adding the knots. As a type of knot they don't like mess so they don't work well with fabric edges that fray and get all tangled up in them - high maintenance knots!

Steely blue fly stitch birds adorn the top layer and that is it really for other stitches in the background. 

I've used felt for the tree trunk and added back stitch lines into the bark for texture. Underneath all of those french knots are pieces of pink fabric which I've used so that I don't have to put quite so many knots down, there are gaps which show a darker pink underneath them all if you look close enough. It also gave me an outline to follow. 

To start off the blossom stitches, I've actually used some little flower beads for additional sparkle. I stole a pot from my Stitchscape Shop ( Flower Bead Tubes | Dotty Textiles ) so you can purchase some yourself if you would like (limited stock and colours available though!). They are textured with each petal its own little bump so I've stitched them down between the petals to accentuate that, using three beads per tree segment. 

Then came the french knots!! I've used two colours (two strand, five twist) over the whole section, then filled in with a darker colour on the lower half of each branch and a lighter colour on the top half to try and create an idea of shadow and give it a more 3D look. 

 

These took a long time! I filled in more than I was initially expecting to because it just never looked quite finished. There are gaps between the knots but the bigger gaps I had initially planned did look a bit odd.

I also then added a few little knots along the bottom underneath the tree to make it seem like a few flowers had drifted off and settled on the ground below. 

Overall, the stitch run down for these cards is; fly stitch, back stitch, running stitch, bullion knots, beading, blanket stitch and french knots.