November Happenings

 

I have a love/hate relationship with the grey days of Autumn. On the one hand they are really depressing and the light is terrible for working in or photographing anything and you have to layer up and my shoes usually leak so I have soggy socks and wet toes. But on the other hand, you can appreciate little wonders like a totally bejewelled spider palace in the plant pots, which just illuminates how clever these little eight legged creatures are, you can get cosy inside with candles and autumnal decorations and fluffy socks, and the thrill of Christmas and Christmas plans is starting to tingle and buzz just a little bit. 

But then again, viruses start to rear their ugly, snotty heads and all three of us have been struck with various lingering coughs, runny noses, blocked ears, hot/cold fevers and general sluggishness. I was doing really well keeping up with my blog posts and was going to have written an on-time Stitchscape Swap post, but then ended up spending two days under blankets on the sofa with Baby F as he was really poorly and just wanted lots of mummy cuddles. 

Luckily we didn't particularly have anywhere to be on those days, although managed a gentle walk in the afternoons as it was sunny and I thought it might help him to sleep at night if he'd had some light exercise. There's only so much children's TV I can put up with too. When I was nap-trapped I had a Stitchscape project on hand (of course) by the side of the sofa so that I didn't need to disturb him by getting up and down. I am almost finished with this one now, I just need a bit of inspiration for my rocks to make them more exciting. It turns out I may not have the correct colour of bead - unbelievable I know! - and may have to go bead shopping...

I also really love what Autumn does to the trees. I love the leaves changing colour, the bold colours of them against a blue sky or grey pavement. I love kicking them and throwing them in the air to make Baby F laugh. We've made pictures with them, I've pressed some pretty ones and displayed them on my wall too. 

I've been enjoying my coffee mornings with slow stitching. Even from the photo above it has changed quite a lot, and has even more changes from when it was started in the summer. For starters it was 12cm not the 15cm one it now is, and it has an extra fabric at the top which I've snuck in to fill the calico gap, and the stones are at the bottom for the same reason. I don't think you can tell and I'll go more into the story of this one when I've finished it and it has its own post. It will need a name though, any suggestions? I've started looking up fun place names in the UK so if you have any good place names near you, do pass them on.

 

My Christmas workshop with Juicy Lemons is now advertised and available to book via their website, here. We initially thought to just make cards in the workshop but will also offer for little tiny hoops so I have been working on another sample of a tiny hoop to add to the adverts. It's been surprisingly slow even though it's only about 8cm. I keep taking it around with me but can't seem to find the right gold thread which has stumped me. My supplier is out of stock of the colour I want and the one I have from them as a substitute is an oddly green gold rather than a nice warm gold gold. If you get what I mean. I do need to get a wiggle on with this though so it's on the priority list!

Our weekend just gone was manic. On the Saturday I had a Christmas workshop at Made and Making, the last one of the year with them (I'll put that in a separate post), and Sunday I was at the Victoria Pavilion Arts Festive Market all day. It was such a great day, there were lots of people I recognised as past customers, current customers, from groups I've given talks or workshops too, and from various different areas of my world so it was great to see everyone. Plus it was a lucrative endeavour which was good because I'd been so stressed about it in the run up with my preparation plans delayed by illness and other things creeping in so I didn't feel prepared for it at all. I must admit, sales from my online shops haven't been as high as they have been in previous years and it is a bit worrying, especially as this sales event was the only one I planned for this year. Times are hard for everyone so any sale I make is appreciated. 

Lots of kits that sold are intended as Christmas gifts and I get such a warm little jiggy feeling inside at the thought of all of these people unwrapping a kit that I have personally designed, photographed, made, drawn, written, cut, compiled, packaged..... I really hope you all like your gifts!

And finally, as always, the months are shorter than I think they are - we are already at the 20th November and I have just started thinking about the Poppy Fields Stitchscape Swap cards due in 10 days! Eeek! Better stop chatting and get a wiggle on. 

October Moss & Lichen ATCs

 

Gosh I really love these Moss & Lichen cards! They are utterly delightful and I have thoroughly enjoyed getting these in the post. They are definitely my favourite so far (I think I say that every month but I'm not going to go back through all of the posts and check), all so tactile and interesting with fluff and bits and gathers and textures and colours and so many stitches! 

I should probably note, for any of the stitchers who join in with the swap, that quite a few of these cards are a bit on the chunky side - they are meant to go home as normal letters which are only 0.5cm thick and there are definitely some borderline ones here. The excitement of the theme may have taken over in this case for some and I can totally sympathise and agree but equally the cost of post has just gone up again!!

But, cautions aside, lets jump in and have a look at this totally touchable collection of wonderfulness. The colours are beautiful, very synchronised together if looking at the cards as a collection. Unfortunately the day I took the photos it was grey and gloomy and my hometown was encased in fog so these are as bright as I could get them in the natural light and they are much warmer in tone in person. 

The positioning of the moss and lichen is really lovely - some are on fallen logs, some growing on upright tree trunks, others tucked into stone walls and some zoomed in to just the texture of the green and yellow and brown fronds. Does moss have fronds? What would you call the little fuzzy sticks that poke up? Leaves? Arms? 

Ooh, let's dive into the techniques shall we, and have a close up look at these gorgeous cards? Jacquie has used beautiful scrappy kind of couching with lots of colours of what looks like thin perle threads with a slight twist to them. I love her log with the pistil stitch upright mushroomy looking beings and french knot mosses. I wonder if she painted the background herself?

Batik fabrics are my absolute favourite, they can be turned into all sorts of things. Stone walls in this case I think, with the most amazing french knot moss amassing a mossy army along the top. There are at least 5 colours used in those knots, how fantastic!

This card is so delicate - the way the lichen has been translated with the creamy embroidery is utterly fantastic. I'm not entirely sure what the stitch is actually called, it looks like a kind of blanket or button hole stitch? Ideal for that kind of representation though, especially if you were doing a stone wall type image and used it in greens and oranges, how fab would that look?

I think the trunks have been cleverly created over the top of a striped fabric, picking out the lighter colour stripes with a whip stitch (maybe?) in two colours and bark texture added just with straight stitches across the trunks. 

Hehe Abi's little snail, isn't he cute with his two-tone shell? He's one of the pretty ones for sure and what a great habitat for him to live in with the patchwork of different fabrics making up the wall he's sliming along.

This one was very padded and textural with the felt, stuffed fabric balls - which I couldn't see if they had been needle turned over a padding or if it was like trapunto quilting or just stuffed and stitched but it is certainly effective! I love the different colours of green too. 

Ah now this is what I was thinking of with the greys and oranges and greens - just like those plastered low stone walls you see with the flat lichen. This one is by Jackie and she always writes on the back of her cards which stitches she has included which I really like. The green fluffy bit is Turkey Stitch and I did take her advice and floof up the moss (next photo down). 

She even managed to get the knotted little flower bits you see on some of the velvety mosses! So, so clever! Makes you immediately want to rush to a hoop and have a go yourself. Maybe I should start running workshops on creating moss hoops rather than rockpool ones for a change?

Lots of different stitches used in this card, as well as felts and beads - everyone has been really creative which is so wonderful. I especially enjoy the different colours used in the lichen (with the beaded edges) to make it look more natural  where the colours would change in real life. I wonder whether the ladies all went out moss and lichen hunting to get their inspiration (I did!).

This card from Sharon was just astounding. I spent ages looking at it, the closer you look the more you see! Fancy ribbons or trims twisted and stitched down then surrounded with fly stitches, french knots, cast-on stitches, turkey stitch, straight stitches and goodness knows what else. It's just so much fun with the combination of everything, she has absolutely gone to town. 

Do you see in the top of this photo where there are gathered pieces of fabric and then the fly stitches are worked upwards, starting in the background fabric and then literally lifting up to go over the fabric and the thread being raised off the fabric completely - you can create such amazing three-dimensional effects by layering and just playing. All of these cards seem really playful and I really hope that everyone had so much fun with them. It looks like they did when you look at the collection. 

Ooo, I love a handful of these Stitchscape cards! This swap brings me so much joy and I'm so privileged to be the host of it and get to see - and in this case touch - the cards up close and in detail. 

Aurora Borealis Stitchscape

 

This Stitchscape has been waiting a little white to be finished because I couldn't seem to remember to rummage through my stash and find the right colour threads to take out with me to complete the bottom section. It has just been travelling around with me and a sheepy Stitchscape pal, rolling its hoop eyes whenever I unzipped the travel pouch and thought "blast, I didn't bring that thread with me again!" 

Eventually, I did think about it before I travelled and came across a really lovely little dark navy coton a broder thread and the absolute, most perfect, purple and pink and black variegated stranded cotton!! Could those colours below be any more perfect to bring together all of the colours appearing in the top half of the hoop?

This one was inspired, if you'll recall, by the Aurora Borealis phenomenon which happened in the South of England a couple of weeks ago and the photos that I was able to take from my back door step of the most amazing streaky pink starry sky. (If you've forgotten, or you missed it, you can see my photos and inspiration here.) I immediately set to putting this vision into a hoop and this is what has appeared out of it! I used fairly streaky looking fabrics for my cloud of light, flanked on both sides by a more starry blue - and I was especially chuffed with the blue ombre fabric, it looks exactly like a night sky. Rather than houses at the bottom of my hoop I have gone with little plants instead just because they felt right to do. 

I started my embroidery on the batik pink/purple layer, working around some of the shapes with whipped back stitch, and then filling in other shapes with satin stitch, trying to merge together different colours moving across the fabric layer where the colour in the pattern itself changes slightly. Because this fabric layer was the last to go on, so it is layered on top of all of the other fabrics, I've had to edge both sides of it and I've kept them almost the same using the same glittery hand dyed yarn blend, except on the bottom line I've also twisted in a couple of strands of one of the pink embroidery flosses I've used within the layer just to give it a slight tweak of difference and help to blend into those bottom pink layers. 

The light pink fabric is a kind of mottled blender, so pretty much a plain fabric, that I've worked uneven straight stitches across vertically to help represent the vertical ripples that you can see in the Aurora photos. (Just using a single strand to keep it quite light.) The darker pink fabric underneath I have followed the existing lines of the pattern with a single strand of stem stitch, and running or straight stitches where needed. To bring back that hint of a vertical line, some of the solid shapes I've then filled in again with vertical straight stitches but this time slightly closer together and using two strands for a more bold look. Both of these fabrics have been edged with matching bullion knots to keep things nice and even. 

For the ombre blue fabric I've worked rows of single strand running stitch but where the colours start to change slightly, I have also changed my thread colour; working a darker blue thread on the shadowed left side, and a lighter blue thread on the lighter right side. I've added little tiny single strand one or two twist french knots in scatters between these rows to give another hint of starriness as we are back to the night sky on this layer. 

The top layer - sneaking back up there - I have worked back stitch around the white spots and seed stitched between them so they stand out in relief almost. Because I've taken my seed stitches (single strand ones) over the raw edge of the fabric I could also work a whipped back stitch just along this edge to keep a very simple line there, plus of course my little cross stitch kisses on the top. 

The final layer at the bottom I actually edged first, which I don't always do but I found a glittery gold thread strand lurking all by itself in my stitching go-bag which wouldn't do - I don't like to waste threads, so I folded it up with some of the darker blue thread I'd used in the running stitch layer and couched it on, pulling it out between the couching stitches so that it bobbled and went in funny directions which looked really interesting. 

I wasn't quite sure what I wanted on the bottom layer so I was very pleased to find those two threads I mentioned earlier because they gave me a kind of inkling as to what I could do, and I had the thought of creating little plant silhouettes against the lighter blue. 

Straight stitch stems were worked first in the coton a broder navy, then the variegated thread I used two strands (topped and tailed) to make pistil stitches between those straight stitch stem clumps. There is a row of single strand navy and two strand variegated clumps along the 'back' - placed along the top edge of the fabric - and then at the 'front', there are two strands of navy and three strands of variegated to make the stitches so they are subtly thicker in their weight of line and therefore physically look closer to you. I've also made the pistil knots bigger with two twists at the back and four at the front. It's these tiny little details which can help give some perspective to a landscape hoop without looking too obvious.

With my leftover ends of the variegated thread I added some horizontal lines in the gap through the middle which had somehow appeared, and now seems like an inviting pathway to the crest of a hill to see the light show. Crosses were added to the bottom in a scrap of the pink thread used further above to help hold that down, and then tiny two strand, one twist french knots scattered across the bottom of the further away clumps to give them a little bit of ground to stand on. 

I'm really pleased with how this turned out. It doesn't exactly look like the view from my back door but it will always remind me of that, and I think if you saw it for the first time you would know where I was coming from. Wouldn't you?

The final stitch run down for this hoop is; seed stitch, whipped back stitch, back stitch, couching, satin stitch, bullion knots, straight stitch, running stitch, stem stitch, french knots and pistil stitch. 

Moss & Lichen

This may be the only Stitchscape Swap blog post of this year that is actually on time! I am still waiting for one card to come in for this swap to complete the set and swap them all back out again so I'm almost early in this case, even if they were finished on the dot of the 31st October! Nothing like a tight deadline. 

This swap I have absolutely loved, loved, loved! I love looking at fun mosses and lichens, stroking and poking them to see what they feel like. They are an entity that has always fascinated me for their myriad of textures and colours, the way they drip down or carpet everything. I'm sure I covered the theme multiple times through school and college for various art projects and I've been known to collect fun ones and move them into the garden (when they aren't attached to anything that is, I don't dig them up). When my family went on a autumnal walk with our small boys a few weeks ago, I found this fantastic, plump clump of lichen just sitting on the carpark floor when I got out of the car! Naturally it came home with me and has lived on top of a bookcase ever since. It has now dried out into fascinating crispy shapes and just looks like a detached scientist's wild hairpiece. 

As such, it is kind of what my moss and lichen cards have been inspired by this month. One singular clump of amazing green lichen with funny flat bits on the end. I decided that I wanted it to be really textured and have created my lichen base by couching on swirled shapes of a hand dyed, beautiful yarn I have in my stash. There are lots of lovely shades of green within it and I love the difference in texture and the slight sheen it has in the light. The gaps between the swirls were filled with my bad french knots (the ones that have deliberate extra loops poking out) in green, then various colours and sizes of green beads to add a bit of light and sparkle to lift the dark colours. It was still missing a little something so I've gone back over it again and made nice, neat french knots in a yellowy/green colour to add in a splash of brightness. 

My background is very brown, and I sort of feel in hindsight it would have been better to have been not quite so brown but that's ok - it's a brown time of year. 

For once I have also stitched the top layer on the card, usually I tend to leave this blank but those dots were calling to me so I have filled each of them with a satin stitch, varying the direction of each spot to add a little more interest. 

Underneath that is a lovely batik fabric with leafy shapes printed in it and I've very simply gone around the edges of those shapes with a single strand back stitch, and filled in the tiny spots with  sort of rough satin stitch to mirror the above layer. 

My branches have been textured with rows of two strand running stitch, matching my thread colour to the paler brown in the layer above, and then a single strand of blanket stitch has been worked along the edges to help the raw cut fabric. As it is also a batik fabric there wasn't a lot of fraying happening but it didn't look quite finished without a stitched edge to it.  

This time I've left the bottom fabric with no stitching, partly because my lichen was trailing off into it anyway, and also because it's a fairly small strip so I didn't feel that it really needed something there. There's a lot going on elsewhere anyway. 

I have really enjoyed playing with my little dried out piece of lichen (although if you Google what a lichen is it doesn't seem so pretty anymore really - formed out of a symbiotic partnership between a fungus and an algae). I wonder if I had it somewhere a little bit wetter whether it would plump out and carry on growing, or if the fact it had already fallen off the tree it was on means that it had completed its lifespan? If anyone knows please do comment. 

So, my stitch run down for these little cards is; satin stitch, bullion knots, back stitch, blanket stitch, running stitch, couching, beading and french knots (neat and not neat). 

I have been peeking at the cards being sent in to join the Moss & Lichen collection and this one is going to be, oh so good! Very exciting!