Shipwrecked

I found this Stitchscape theme quite tough to get my head around. I'm not sure why because I came up with the idea in the first place, but by the time September rolled around and I had to make a card up, I just drew a blank for a while. After some internet browsing I decided that I wanted to do something underwater so that I could put some fun little characters and sea creatures into the cards, so I've used a mottled brown batik fabric to create the outline of a ship-like shape and then had all of my fun making starfish and crabs on the seabed.

It was physically quite hard to stitch actually as the multiple layers of batik fabric were not at all happy to let a needle through them and I ended up with some bruises on my thumb and finger from the wiggling of the needle that was going on. The wreck fabric was secured down with blanket stitch around the edge, and I added just a little bit of plank detailing at the top with a line of whipped back stitch. Most of my detail in the boat was to add a porthole using a doughnut shape of brown felt - I had meant to fill in the circle behind it in a darker fabric, or thin shiny black plastic or something, but I completely forgot to  do it until it was too late! I considered filling in the hole with satin stitch or a circle of felt cut to fit but I didn't think either option would fill it in the best way so ended up just working a simple row of back stitch in a thick coton perle thread (which really hated travelling through the batik fabric) to just kind of nod at there being  a darker area. I'm pretty sure some portholes in real life used to have plugs in them to stop the water coming in so that's what we're going with instead - the closed porthole window. 

The top fabric layer is a brilliant batik fabric that to me looks exactly like how water looks like from underneath with the ripples of dark and light, and shadows of things flying overhead. Similarly the next layer down (which you can now barely see) is another batik which is just ripples of colour, but a bit more turquoise-y to fit in with my seaweed plants and to blend the colour down to the greens in the bottom layer. 

The bottom fabric was a gem of a find in my stash. Mr DT gave it to me for my birthday this year as part of a pack of fabrics, and it had starfish printed on it!!! Beautiful pink outlined starfish with some dashes in the middle for texture. I carefully cut around these, trying to focus on the starfish - three of the cards have one each but one card caught the pattern where there were two buddied up together. 

I've actually only stitched the starfish on this layer really, ignoring all of the plants and the leaf shapes that are also in the print. I've gone around the existing drawn lines with two strand whipped back stitch (whip stitch over back stitch for a solid line), and just added my own dashes with some seed stitch in the middle. 

The seaweed itself is a puffy, roving yarn which I have pulled apart, layered down and worked feather stitches over to give them some leafy shapes. I've also pulled apart some goldwork purl wire (2mm smooth purl) and couched that down for a really discreet sparkle over the top. Any gaps between these seaweed pieces where the top of my starfish layer is, I've then filled with some french knots to be built up silty sand drifts around my shipwreck.

I do like my little crabs - they only made it onto three of the cards because I couldn't fit one onto the double starfish card. The body is made with an oval of red felt, stitched down with a single strand of back stitch around the shape, then I've done really terrible scrappy straight stitch claws and back stitch legs (and yes I did Google how many legs a crab has and it is 8 with two front claws). To contrast with the red I've gone for quite a bright blue to make french knot eyes and add just a little bit of pattern with back and straight stitches on his shell.

Bubbles in silver metallic thread have been added with small french knots, and longer straight stitch stems in green were added around the starfishes to help them feel more comfortable and less sticky-outy.

Photographing anything in this house is proving to be very tricky with a small furry creature who is interested and involved in everything you do. It's like having a slightly prickly shadow that just follows me around getting his paws and tail in everything!

So there we go! My Shipwrecked Stitchscape Swap cards ready to go. The stitch run down for these cards is; blanket stitch, whipped back stitch, french knots, feather stitch, back stitch, couching, straight stitch and seed stitch.