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!