Patchwork Fields ATCs

I could have carried on stitching these little ATCs forever! There are so many little details that could have been added, the options were fairly endless. I could have attempted walkers in the field, rows of electricity pylons, lily pads or reeds in the water, clouds in the sky, a tractor!! I did try a boat in the water on one of them but I couldn't get the shape right so I pulled it out again. 

These are just so joyful and I love that each one is different. The shapes were all randomly cut out and placed on each card then tacked down but the cards are the same in that they include those same fabrics, albeit in different quantities and compositions, and each fabric has been treated the same way. 

The water has been edged, at least on one side per card, in baby ric-rac which I've stitched over rather than through. It's perhaps the most startling choice out of everything on the card but I was using it to try and make a sort of shingle bank or beach and have stitched it down with a pale beige so that the lighter cream is broken up a bit. The water itself has been stitched with rows of single strand running stitch and a glittery whip stitch added in a super skinny metallic thread that I found in The Mother's stash and borrowed for the occasion. The benefit of this broken whip stitch is that it creates movement and direction so hopefully the water looks more like it is moving, as well as slightly shiny. 

Jetties have been added with just a few close straight stitches (not really neat enough for a true satin stitch) which I think really makes it look more watery for some reason. 

The green layers have been embellished with seed stitch for the plain green, single strand back stitch in two colours following the lines of the striped fabric, back stitch again in two strands following the darker green batik fabric lines, and satin stitch over the spots in the spotted batik fabric. I've used a piece of green felt in each to add a little bit of height and to intimate at a hill with trees over the top in mixed colour acrylic yarn french knots. These are much bigger than other french knot tree lines I've made so hopefully they look like big mature oaks or something. I've also added a sprinkle in the centre of fields as well to help blend layers together. 

My two yellow layers have had french knots following the pattern underneath for the linear spotted one, and single strand whipped back stitch on the stripy fabric. Single strand, one twist french knots have been added over the top of that in red to represent poppies in the wheat field. 

For edgings I've got two different colours of string in a sandy gold and brighter green which have been couched down, then I've got one proper edging in french knots and two others in bullion knots for different textured hedge lines and field boundaries. 

Finally, to finish, I've added sheep in one of the fields on each with two strand, two twist white french knot bodies and one strand, two twist black french knot heads. I think these are so cute!!!

Around the water areas I've also added little fly stitch birds in a dark blue/grey. I was worried these would be a bit lost or look strange because the angle of them is the same as if I were making a landscape piece where you look at it from the perspective of the ground but I think they still work and look like they're flying. 

These cards are just so photograph-able! Every time you pick one up you can see new angles and pick up on little details, and they're also great fun to try and put together like a strange jigsaw. You can see in the bottom photo of this blog post how I've tried to put them together to make the water flow through all four cards as if they were segments of the same image. They're like those toys which you can twist and turn to make different pictures by moving one thing at a time, or a kaleidoscope maybe?

It took much longer than I thought to stitch these though - I naively thought that because all of the bits were so little it would be done in no time but actually that wasn't the case and I had to stop in the end because I needed the Waterlily cards in the same hoop to swap around. One day I really will have to count how long it takes me to make a Stitchscape themed thing. 

So the stitch run down for these cards is; seed stitch, french knots, back stitch, whipped back stitch, whipped running stitch, satin stitch, fly stitch and couching. Not a huge number of stitches but in this case there's lots of emphasis on size and weight of line to try and bring things higher or lower than each other and create some depth in the landscape. It's a different challenge from my usual Stitchscape angle and I'd love to try a proper hoop piece like this as well (once I've finished all of my other projects and priorities!!).

Waterlily Pond ATCs

I cut these ATCs from the hoop in time for the swap by the skin of my teeth. Not because I was late with these ones but because I make two themes at a time and I hadn't finished the next theme (Patchwork Fields) I couldn't cut these out. 

I had spent a little while on these, I think because the idea didn't completely come out as I had thought it would in my head. For me there's something off about the bridges - whether they're the wrong colour, or don't pop from the background enough or the texture is wrong...I can't put my finger on it which is why they've stayed as they are because I don't have an answer on how to correct it. They have improved by having the trees tumbling down in front and there being more focus on the lilies below but I don't feel entirely comfortable with them. 

I think also there's an element that I don't like the stitching between the railings on the bridge. Perhaps if I had built up the bridge from strips rather than cut the whole piece out as one it would have worked better for me. As it was, the square shapes in the centre of the felt were hard to cut out so precisely and each one has a slightly different character (which isn't what I mind as each card should be it's own entity). 

I was also using up threads in my thread box and ran out of a colour half way through a bridge (horror!) so in one of them you can actually see that I have used a darker blue around the two central squares (top left one), and another bridge is completely stitched using that darker colour. 

It still gives off the impression that I wanted. Possibly surprisingly, I wasn't thinking of Monet when I made the bridges, the fabrics were chosen a long time ago as they just screamed 'waterlilies' at me. 

I had the fabric in two colourways so I used them both, the darker shade to hint at a shadowy section of pond underneath the bridge. Maybe that's the bridge issue actually, that the darker fabric also appears above the bottom section of the bridge....I should have cut the background to fit the bridge....hmmmm. Too late now but perhaps that would resolve it if I tried again - maybe I'll have a play just to appease myself. 

As is often the case, the top fabric hasn't had anything added to it, and the others barely any. The second fabric down has been edged with a single strand blanket stitch, with a running stitch following the line of the bridge at the bottom of the layer. 

The darker circular print fabric has been edged with bullion knots and nothing more, but the lighter circular print has had some of those shapes picked out and worked in a rough satin stitch to give more of a texture for lily pads. 

The Willow trees have been made by stripping apart a jute string I had in my stash and couching it down into random branches. The benefit of untwisting the string and using the strands is that it has retained a slight curliness from when the strands were wrapped around each other and it's made it more interesting a line to follow. Once each piece was couched and trimmed to different lengths to make it less uniform, I added single fly stitches in a couple of colours along each branch to hint at leaves. The ends of the string have been left quite straggly. I possibly didn't need to couch the strands down really, I could have just gone straight in with the fly stitches but I think it was easier to secure them in place first. 

I added some 'obvious' lily pads in felt as well - I was going to add more and in different colours but I thought that three actually worked quite well because the tree took up a fair amount of space. Having done the tree first I ended up trying to stitch underneath it quite a bit which would be something to remember if I did have another go. 

The waterlilies have been made using detached chain stitches. For the bigger flowers I've done a taller row of chain stitches and then added a smaller one into each to try and hint at that kind of roundness. The smaller flowers just have a single line of detached chain stitches, but they all then have a single strand of a darker pink just stitched in between each shape to try and add a bit of depth, plus fill in the gap in the stitch itself. 

For the glittery water, I've used my clear, yet slightly pink tinged, sequins again and stitched these down with invisible thread. 

The cards needed a bit more depth to them so I've added a shadow line in stem stitch, using two strands of a dark blue floss just following that bottom line of the bridge to try and hint that it is darker and shadowy-er under there. It also colour matches the darker circle shapes in that fabric. French knots have been used to blur the lines of the two watery fabrics and that's them completed! (Other than the backs stitched on and the cards cut out and labelled.) 

So overall the stitches used here were; running stitch, blanket stitch, couching, fly stitch, back stitch, stem stitch, detached chain stitch, satin stitch, bullion knots and french knots. Quite a lot actually for such small pieces!! I'm so looking forward to the whole Waterlily Pond collection coming together for the swap. 

Fire Flower II Stitchscape Kit

 

Huzzah! Fire Flower II is here!! I was worried about this kit, as this is such a popular colour combination I didn't want to lose the essence of the design just because one of the original fabrics was not available anymore. There was a pressure (which I put on myself) to make this just as loveable as the first one without losing anything. But it's done, it's put together, it's photographed and it's ready and available for purchase online!!!! 

I'm running a test with it though. Etsy, my usual main online shop, charges lots of seller fees and there's a fair amount of unrest within the Etsy community as it seems to have started to place shop funds 'on hold' and not pay the earnings to the seller for 90 days, seemingly at will. So far it hasn't done it to me but I also haven't had any proper Etsy sales for a while so I'm not sure if my products are just no longer desirable, or whether Etsy isn't advertising them (something which we are made to pay for without choice anyway).... or what's going on really. 

Ideally I'd like to move my shop completely to my website but it's a risky move as most of my international orders come via Etsy and I doubt they'd find me at all just by Googling. For now though, this Fire Flower II kit is only available on my website! (For which, in all honesty, I also get better rates on as I don't get charged fees on; initial listing, relisting, the fact an item sold, a commission fee, a fee on postage costs, VAT on everything, and anything else they can inexplicably add a fee onto. It's exhausting trying to figure out what the charges are for and how much I actually end up with in the end. If someone buys a kit through an Etsy 'advert' I get charged a huge marketing fee which can cost me up to £5 an item alone, on top of all of those other fees!)

So yes, Fire Flower II is currently only available in my Web Shop (and hopefully with some stockists fairly soon too). 

The top half is very similar to the original Fire Flower design, but there is more emphasis on the grey mountains and I like to think that I've improved the sun too - there are certainly more details in the booklet about how to make the sunshine, a whole page dedicated to a step-by-step diagram on it!

The bottom half is where most of the difference lies as the main feature there are the detached chain stitch daisies in two different colours. They interpret the loose design of the fabric below so your placement and petal quantity and size of the flowers etc will be different from mine. 

The kit comes with all of the fabrics (backing fabric and six patterned pieces), the threads (both stranded Anchor cotton and DMC coton perle), grey lace and 2mm yellow cord. You will need to have your own embroidery needles and a 15cm embroidery hoop (or add the hoop as an extra to the basket if you'd like me to send you one). This one is really easy for beginners. It does have bullion knots - the marmite stitch - snuck in at the top there but there aren't many and they are partially hidden by the rays so it's up to you if you tackle them. French knots will then be the most common, slightly advanced, stitch but there are diagrams and a description on how to make them, along with every other stitch used, in the booklet as well. 

I recently had my Woollydale II kit reviewed by another embroidery artist who was comparing it with a mass produced one she bought from Amazon. Nothing bad was said, she was very nice about it being so high quality but it was interesting being compared to something mass produced and churned out by robots. She ended the review by saying that if you were a complete beginner you might as well buy the Amazon one because it was cheaper and had needles etc in it rather than a lot of money on an expensive but higher quality kit. Which I don't totally agree with. I honestly put so much work and effort into making these kits that I feel almost as if, if you are a beginner, you might be more encouraged to keep going if you are challenged and finish it. For this Fire Flower kit, The Mother said to me, it's just one fabric that needs changing, why bother changing the whole kit and starting again? And the reason was because each layer is instructioned in such a detailed way, it wouldn't work for another fabric, and I might as well take the opportunity to improve where I can based on new experiences in other kits or feedback from customers. 

The other reason why I think my kits are better than Amazon ones is because I am a real person, you can contact me if you are stuck or need advice, if the way I haven't explained something in the book isn't clicking and you need a demonstration or a run through. What isn't necessarily printed, but should be absolutely understood at the time of purchase, is that you can come back to me at any time for help or guidance, praise or encouragement, and I'm genuinely delighted when I get sent photos of finished projects. Try and buy that off Amazon!!!

I really hope that you like this alternative version to the first Fire Flower kit and if you make it, do send me a picture and let me know how you found it! (I'll just cheekily leave the link here once more....)

Isle of Wight Shells Stitchscape

I finished this piece ages ago and have been really remiss in actually posting about it. My blog posting these days comes in a flurry where I collect all of the photos that have been accumulating on my camera and phone, add them all to various blogs posts and try and write lots of them at once so that I can just post every so often but, when I run out of the pre-made ones, then I forget all about continuing to add the new sets that are building up. It's a bit like a pressure cooker - too much pressure and I mass blog, then it all dies down again. 

Anyway, I have posted about this one already a couple of times so this is just the finished look. If you want to see how it was created from the very start then click here to see what it first looked like and here to see how I made the little sticky-outy anemone things. 

The bottom half is a pleasing mass of texture. As well as the stitched real shells (collected from the Isle of Wight funnily enough), it has Stylecraft Moonbeam yarn in a light beige colour stitched into big loops and also stretched over shells for a flatter texture. The Moonbeam yarn alternates between matte and shiny and I've used both of these sections to create different effects. Around that there are drizzle stitches in green, loopy french knots (deliberately un-tensioned when stitched to give big bunny ears), bullion knot barnacles, neat french knots, the suede anemones and several different colours and sizes of bead. I haven't stitched on the fabric to create a texture on it, just secured the top with loosely couched raffia, and the bottom with some pale blue crosses to hold it. 

The top half, by comparison, is quite restrained! With the cloud fabric I have gone around each cloud with a single strand of back stitch in white, adding in slight fluffiness and detail with french knots. The blue areas are filled with single strand seed stitch and I've added some fly stitch birds over the top in a dark grey because they always look good in seascape pieces. The top edge has been covered with bullion knots and my cross stitch kisses, and the bottom edge has couched acrylic yarn which I battered and pulled at a bit first to give it a more puffy look. 

The fabric underneath was set behind the cloud fabric and brighter blue underneath as I wanted it to be as if the horizon were disappearing away so I haven't made much of this and have just kind of ignored it. More Moonbeam yarn in a dusky blue has been couched over the raw edge of the brighter blue in a sort of mirror of the couching above and to give those sections height, again trying to push back that horizon line. 

The two blue 'sea' fabrics have been basically treated in the same way, ignoring any pattern completely. Running stitch in a thicker, two strand, thread that sort of matches the fabric colouring and then a frosty blue metallic single strand whip stitch along each row. Whip stitch over running stitch is great for water because the broken line accentuates the wave pattern and gives it a lot of movement. 

For the lower sea fabric I have edged this with a full six stranded floss piece just to keep it neat without adding too much extra detail. 

The rocks have been edged and partially filled in with french knots, with the gaps between them covered in little stitches over each spot in the fabric. It looks almost like a seed stitch because they are in different directions and fairly regular but the intention was to just add a little stitched 'dollop' on top of all of the printed spots. 

So from humble beginnings as an example piece on layering and attaching shells, it's now a fully fledged Stitchscape! The total stitch list is; bullion knots, straight stitch, seed stitch, fly stitch, french knots, back stitch, couching, running stitch, whip stitch, drizzle stitch and beading. 

It looks good out in the sunshine too, right at home among the rays.