Oo I love this part of the Stitchscape Swap! I think it's my favourite bit actually, where I can pull out all of the cards that have been arriving on the doormat, getting quickly checked over and stashed away safely until everyone's has arrived and it's time! Time to get them out and arrange them and play with them in different orders, really examine how they've been made and what has been used, how the stitches are created and with what. Eee so exciting!
Arlo gets excited too, mainly because he likes to be interested in what I'm interested in. I'm not sure how much he really appreciates the cards, but he does love threads and fabric scraps and other bits so perhaps if he had opposable thumbs he'd be creating with me too.
Look how gorgeous these are! Beautiful colours, lots of blues and greens and muted yellows which work perfectly together. Different greys and browns in rock or driftwood colours, startling whites of weather worn sails, and flashes of metallic sparkles in the treasure and water. They work beautifully together as a collection.
It's interesting to see the ratios of types of different interpretations. There are a high quantity of very similar, drowning ship designs. 5 out of 9 show sinking ships, although one also has a girl on the sand watching the ship go down and the others are just out at sea. One definitely has a Titanic-esque look about it. We have 1 card with pirate treasure, 1 card with a cove and lighthouse (which clearly isn't doing a good enough job with all of the wrecking going on in the collection!) and 2 out of 9 cards show sea life around a wreck area. I'm fairly sure that covers all of the inspiration points I wrote down on my fact sheet too actually which is amazing.
And there are HUGE waves in the below one! Just look at the enormous swell the steam ship has been caught in here with all that motion in the different coloured rows of back stitch and the dark stormy skies above.
The colours really make this card for me with the bright blue fluffy yarn contrasting so beautifully with the orange fish and their blue eyelashes. They look like they are living among some old rigging and bits of ship, now made into a natural habitat and covered in sea plants and debris.
Abi's card reminds me of when you get those shipping containers that fall into the sea and then hundreds of logs or Lego bricks wash up on the shoreline and residents go completely bonkers collecting it all up. I'm not exactly sure if that's what she intended with her card but that's what it looks like to me - do you see something different?
These sails have been so whipped around by the high winds on the stormy sea that they are practically non-existent! The fabric backing for this is brilliant, it looks like whooshes of wind, but also of a starry night sky, and then there are glimmers of an ocean floor below - a bit like when in movies the camera is half in and half out of the water so you get those two different worlds in one image.
The detail on Jackie's sails here is wonderful. The attention to detail in creating the raggedy edges, and the three-dimension of stitching parts of them upright so that they look like they are blowing is fantastic. She's found exactly the right sky fabric too with the seagull swooping around above all of the drama below.
I love this treasure chest, it makes me chuckle. There will be a very cross pirate somewhere with his
I'm sure you'll agree that there is beautiful work here! Gorgeous colour work, brilliant layering and perspective to create the story and suck you into the drama unfolding and just all-round, wonderful miniature art pieces!
I love the perspective in this card with us peering through a rock archway or out of the mouth of a cave or something. The rolling couched waves do look very uninviting, I would certainly not be paddling in that, far too swirly. But the lighthouse is so darn cute perched on its rocky outcrop there.
'hard-earned' treasure spilling out like that onto the sand. The big sequins at the bottom are strange, they almost look like plastic rather than the metallic foil sequins you usually get. I wonder where she got those from.
Once the photos have all been taken - and I have to do different types of photo, there's the big collection photo, close ups to have on the blog of my favourite card details, and whole card photos to have on the website - I have the head-scratching job of looking through my Excel spreadsheet to see who hasn't had a card from whom yet and trying to make sure that I am being fair with my sharing of the cards. It gets more difficult toward the end of the year as we don't have huge numbers in any given month, it can range from 7-12 cards sent in, so if I can't send back out a card from a completely different person, I can check and do a repeat person but from much earlier in the year (rather than sending Amy cards by Julie twice in consecutive months, if you see what I mean).
If you would like to jump in to the swap and have a go at the next theme you're more than welcome! Have a look at the dedicated ATC page on my website for more details and for past images of yearly collections.
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