Etsy Stitchscape Pendants

I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts that I have been taking a lot of photos of Stitchscape products to add to my shop and make it more pretty. These aren't new products, they were made last year, but never made it into my Etsy shop as they usually come with me to shows and events as stock to sell there. As all events have been cancelled for the foreseeable future, I have now photographed them and added them to my shop.

These are all hand stitched pendants in a variety of shapes and sizes but all under 6cm wide at any point. I have used my favourite flower embroidery techniques and, much like the Stitchscape pebbles, they used up odds and ends of threads so the colours don't always match.

The embroideries were all worked in big hoops, having drawn around the inner wooden circle that comes with the wooden hoop set. Once stitched, the embroidery gets cut out and stitched around the centre wooden block. This then gets put in to and tightened in the hoop and a wooden backing piece glued on the back to secure everything into place. The hoops are advertised as a novelty jewellery type thing but you could also just hang these from the ribbon as a really tiny little embroidered flower garden piece.

I just really love the photos of these pieces and had great fun setting up little photoshoots all over the place. I do have a photo booth box type thing with a couple of lights that can be positioned either side of the fabric of the box for diffused lighting, but if the weather is right outside (sunny but not too sunny, slightly overcast but not dark (and definitely not raining!)) then I'll go out there as natural light tends to be better.

There is something for everyone I hope and they can all be found in Etsy (although there's only one of each so if you dally, you might miss out!) - the link to which is on the right hand side of the page.

The Last Bluebell Hurrah

The Bluebells have truly been glorious this year - both in my local woodland (see here) and also in our garden. Dad is the main gardener of the household and he's more than happy for it to be slightly wild looking so we've ended up with more natural areas that are chocca full of Bluebells and can be seen in great patches from both the front and back of the house.
These first images are from the back of the house where we really get the evening sunshine coming through, making the flowers glow and outlining the petals in a halo of light.

These will only last for another week if that, and we have a huge patch in the front garden where it's more sheltered that have already gone over. They'll be left for a little while to go to seed and to absorb nutrients back into the bulbs ready for next year.

I think I'll always remember this quiet, lockdown period as being filled with Bluebells. It has been so lovely to have their company through this hard time. We humans might be all over the place at the moment but nature will plod on regardless on her own yearly course.

More Wonky Sheep Pebbles

I've been trying to update my Etsy shop and keep things fresh and pretty. At the beginning of the year it was looking a little bit tired and last week, after the insane order volume I was suddenly getting thanks to everyone stuck at home doing some online shopping, it was looking downright scraggy! However, I have been out and about with my trusty camera and also been working hard on creating new pieces to lift my shop and make it look lovely again, offering a variety of products to either make or purchase and that can be sent to give smiles and lift spirits of others who are finding the lockdown hard, or perhaps haven't been very well.

A couple of these new pebbles have already been ordered and sent with sweet gift messages expressing thanks for a neighbour's help during hard times, or offering a smile and a virtual hug and I am truly thankful that you trust me with these messages and think that my little pieces of artwork will provide the happy mail that someone needs. It's a real honour.

These pebbles are hot off the hoop this week and I have two Italian summer inspired large pebbles featuring the fun woven wheel flower stitches. These really are little pieces of pocket sized sunshine!

I also tried some bullion knot roses after the success of using bullion knots to create Barnacles in my rockpool experimental hoop. I like them but my favourite thing about this pebble is the three petalled daisies!! I shall have to use this technique more often I think with the white petals and hot orange middles. They really remind me of Echinacea flowers! This one is only a small pebble because it filled up a gap in my hoop among all of the large pebbles I was intending on stitching.

With so many Woollydale kits flying out of the door I have been making up lots more of them and this has generated lots of sheep fabric scraps which are perfectly pebble sized! Lots of people find this fabric charming and hilarious because some of the sheep will inevitably end up upside down, and this is even funnier on a pebble because I don't have a lot of space to choose from and am kind of stuck with whichever bit I get as the small scrap. Sometimes I'll try and get the sheep to stand up a bit more and centre them upright where I can, but other times I will just embrace the mad upside-down-ness of it all and the sheep will all be taking a nap.

Each pebble is unique and as I am also using up odds and ends of threads, there can be any colour thrown in there. It's also any stitch that takes my fancy although I must admit that I really love these fly stitch leaves as a topping. You can team them with any kind of flower; lazy daisies, french knot tapers, pistil stitches, bullion knots, woven wheel - whatever you like.

I had a fun little photoshoot with these out in the garden with the sun peeking in and out and the wind whipping the pebbles and threatening to blow them across the garden. The sheep were loving being outdoors and were frolicking all over the place and doing somersaults.....or maybe the lockdown is finally getting to me?!?!
Anyway, these are all listed in Etsy if you would like to grab one for yourself. The link to my shop is on the right hand tab of this page.

Bluebell Garden Stitchscape

I think it was around this time last year that I was sat in the little cafe next to the-stitchery in Riverside, Lewes, with the owner of the-stitchery (the lovely Saira) and a fabric rep, Margaret. Margaret had come to show us what beautiful materials her company had to offer and Saira and I had agreed to have a look to see whether we could do a joint order to keep the costs down for ourselves and share the carriage charge.
It was a most exciting meeting and there were so many gorgeous fabrics!! I was particularly drawn to the batik fabrics and could have ordered way more than the restricted bundle I kept myself to. "Great" said Margaret, "these fabrics should be with you in August."
August??? I thought, golly that's a long time to wait to get my hands on these now that my brain is fired up and ticking over. But wait I had to, and they actually didn't arrive until September and October, and then I was caught up in the Christmas rush so I still didn't have time to do anything with them but one of the benefits of being stuck at home is that I get a little bit more time to work on projects so out they came!!

I knew I wanted a kit that had a heavy batik influence. I love these fabrics for their ability to make everything unique - a huge ethos for my Stitchscape kits and business. Hand embroidery is so personal, sometimes actual blood, sweat and tears goes into hand made projects and I don't believe in cloning work. If you've made it, it should be yours and, even if you've followed a pattern or a kit, something in it should be unique to you. Five out of seven of these fabrics are different types of batik so I'm really intrigued to see how my customer's work with them and how much each kit can change purely because of the hand that's been dealt to it in each little strip of beautiful batik fabric.

I had the idea for a Bluebell themed kit this time last year - I've made several Bluebell Woods themed Stitchscapes over the years and always had really lovely comments about them, but I wasn't sure whether I would be able to turn a woodland Stitchscape into a kit. These are slightly more advanced than the kits I've done previously, with fabrics going in different directions, and using tapestry yarn for the french knot leaves. There's a lot of patience required for the bullion knot Bluebells too although in this case I've added in beads to try and speed the process up a little.

I have lots of little hints and tips so I think the booklet accompanying the kit will be quite a lengthy one, and I'm not planning particularly on setting exact positions for the Bluebells or the leaves on the trees. You can copy me if you like but where you put these in your hoop is up to you. There will also be health and safety notices for your hands and posture towards the end when the stitching gets very knot heavy- not that I want to put anyone off, it's well worth the effort!

During lockdown I've been lucky enough to still be able to walk through my local wood which, just so happens, to be a Bluebell woodland. Thanks to the lovely weather we've been having, the sun filters through the fresh new tree canopy and bathes little areas in gorgeous sunlight, something that I really wanted to bring through to my kit. The colours are slightly over bright and zesty, but that really speaks to me of new growth and a new year. The trees aren't quite full of leaves yet but its enough to bring a blur of greens to offset the yellow sunshine and blue Bluebells.

The stitches in this kit are still very easy, the top layer uses long straight stitches, or a little bit of back stitch in a single strand of thread, depending on what bits you get of the pattern. The yellow/green layer beneath it has a single strand back stitch around every shape and is edged with french knots. The green layer beneath that uses stem stitch to go around the chunky shapes, with a seed stitch filler in the green areas and a whip stitch to the fabric edge.

The green leaf patterned fabric has each leaf pulled out and covered in satin stitch and the blue layer at the bottom has single strand back stitch along the wavy lines of the print (that you can't really see now) to give the straight stitch stems of the flowers a base to sit on. There are two colours of green for the stems and these are topped with two colours of blue tube bead and four colours of blue bullion knots, focusing the darker colours to the higher edge of the fabric (near to the lace fence) and working down to the lighter blues at the bottom of the fabric, trying to recreate that shaft of sunlight.
In front of the largest tree, the straight stitch stems have been doubled up to make them appear closer, and the bullions have been worked with three or four strands to make them chunkier.
The size of the knots is also different in the main Bluebell 'garden' with the darker colours being worked in two strands and the lighter ones in three strands, again pulling these lighter ones towards you.

The trees have been kept very simple, the central tree (with grey leaves) has a straight stitch dividing each leaf and flanked with a fly stitch 'v' shape either side of it to fill the leaf. The stems have been worked in back stitch. Four strands of thread have been couched down to the sides of the tree to neaten the edges.
The beige tree on the left has been filled with a single strand of seed stitch and again used embroidery thread couched to the sides.
The larger tree at the forefront has also used seed stitch, but in two strands so they are bigger, and the tree appears closer, and this time uses a vertical whip stitch which is a new technique to my kits but something I use all of the time in my Stitchscapes. Hopefully I will be able to include a diagram in the kit booklet to help explain how to do this. Again the tree has had thread couched to the sides.

The leaves again use this idea of size to push objects back or to give the overall image depth. The tapestry yarn has four strands twisted together and I have split this down to two (a: to make it easier to find a slimline needle to fit the yarn through the eye and b: to make it easier to pull the yarn through the tightly woven layers of cotton and c: to make the yarn go further).
The 'furthest' tree is the beige one on the left hand side and the french knots here are only two twists so they are fairly small and compact. The central tree is closer in our landscape so these knots are mostly four twists, although I have also put some two twist knots in there as well for 'baby leaves'.
The closest tree on the right has six twist leaves so they are super chunky and sit out proud from the hoop, I've also mixed colours on this tree (for both leaves and bark) because you would be able to see more definition of something that is closest to you whereas further away it would blur more into a single shade.

One of the things I love most about this piece are the beads that I've used. I wasn't sure at first about using both a matte bead and a shiny, pearlescent bead. I thought that they might be at odds with each other but, actually, it works really well as the lighter beads flash and catch in the light whilst the darker ones are cast in shadow so wouldn't be flashing. The difference in texture between the lace, the tapestry yarn, fabrics, embroidery threads and beads is also really interesting and makes you want to run your fingers over it all of the time.

Whilst this piece is finished now there is still most of the work left to do!! This kit is also slightly different because when I 'asked the audience' for their advice on what trimming to use for my fence, it was a toss up between this navy guipure lace or a turquoise jute trim, they couldn't decide and it was such a 50/50 split I have made both of them. So I still have the turquoise jute version left to finish as I am intrigued to see what it would look like.
I've also got to write and design the kit booklet which will probably be very word and diagram heavy, get that printed, design and print the template pages, get the thread cards made up, cut all of the fabrics, weigh out or count the beads, cut the trimmings and package it all together. There is a lot more involved in this kit than ever before so it will be a real learning curve for me!

The stitch round up for the Bluebell Garden Stitchscape is; BULLION KNOTS, french knots, straight stitch, back stitch, whip stitch, stem stitch, seed stitch, couching, beading, satin stitch and fly stitch. Not too hard huh? Do you think you'd have a go at this kit?