History

In the interests of completeness these are the first two atcs I ever did.

The first theme was Winter and as with Strawberries and Cream I cut the background from a machine embroidered piece, in this case white organza over white cotton with sparkly bits inbetween the sandwich, densely machine sewn with white cotton in snowflake and jaggy wintery patterns. The motifs were hand stitched and were an exercise in embroidery stitch practice. The centre is silver chain stitch, and the outside a kind of running stitch. In the series I also tried out Cretan stitch round a patch of silver fabric which worked very well.

Then at our first meeting when we all nervously handed over our first atcs, all feeling they were no good and gaining such confidence from talking about how we felt and seeing how good everybody else's 'no good' atcs were.

Fiona gave us paper scraps for our second series: Spring. My background is woven yellow fabrics bondawebbed down which was finickity but looked really good. For the first 6 in the series I embroidered the words S, P, R, I, N and G on each card using green space dyed thread and chain stitch, whipped with a glittery thread. Onto each I stuck one of Fiona's bird scraps. For the last three I used the butterfly scraps and this one is my favourite. I stuck the butterfly down with ordinary glue and stitched round with long and short stitch. I really like the effect on the reverse. I used a technique in a book on fabric postcards to edge this which comprises sewing round the edges three times, each time using zig zag stitch with a shorter stitch length and longer zig zag until you end up with a lovely satin stich, but it did use an entire small reel of Gutermann which is a bit expensive for me!

At this time I did my reverses all in the same font, aiming to have a consistent style, but I've changed my mind and love playing with the fonts instead!

Strawberries and cream

After quite a concrete interpretation last time, for the June theme 'Strawberries and Cream' I decided to go abstract. I was in the middle of two classes on making a bag I am ridiculously proud of hosted by the very patient Fiona Brockie at the Seattle Quilt Company and was delighted with finally getting to grips with free machine quilting on a shop Pfaff, I made everyone laugh by commenting 'oh, I didn't realise you didn't have to turn'. I can be a little slow, I blame the brain cells lost in trying to care for a 4 year old.

I carefully made sure I'd cut out enough backing for 9 cards as nothing would be worse than finding I didn't have enough. I ironed bondaweb on the front and then cut out lots of strawberry shapes from scraps. The thing I love about atcs is it slots into my eco friendly ethos meaning that I now rarely throw any fabric away, cutting the pretty motifs off daughter's outgrown clothes, and in this project I was able to use even little scraps. I placed the scraps on the background and ironed them down.

I don't have a free machine foot at present, may be on my wish list for the Festival of Quilts in August, so I used the patterns I had on the machine, a green leaf pattern for the strawberry leaves and cream waves for the cream. If I'd been free machining I would have tried swirls, maybe better not!

I printed the backing cards in a chirpy pink using a funky font called 'Chick'. I cut my embroidery into atc cards and sewed the backing cards on with a machine that was determined not to do satin stitch, well, not to keep tension, it does need a service I think.

Once upon a time...

I got really excited when I got this title and had ideas about tiny cathedral windows and secret gardens as I learned how to do in my first bit of sewing from an article from Lynne Edwards and I came back, as ever, to The Snow Queen again but then I changed my mind (!) and decided to marry cross stitch, my enduring history, and atcs.

I stitched each motif on some great sparkly aida I had left over from a long ago advent calendar project, I love the way each suggests a story rather than being about one, seeding the imagination.

I had great fun choosing the font, I downloaded a wide range from 1001freefonts and was able to find one called The King and Queen Font which was just perfect. I like paying as much attention to the reverse as the front of my atcs.

I printed the front of each card pink using my printer and cut the motifs out carefully leaving three or four lines of holes on each side, and using a needle to pull the threads out to give a pretty frayed look, then I stuck them on. So the cards look very thin.

Rainbow serpent completed

This is the first ATC set completed that I am really chuffed with. My final choice of words for the set was:
Red – courage, love - two of the most important things in my life
Orange – life, warmth - despite my illness, or perhaps because of it, life calls to me even at my saddest
Yellow – sunshine, sand - sunshine is fab for feeling down, and we live by the beach
Green – spirit, nature - the importance of the green goddess in healing cannot be underestimated
Blue – sea , day - again, we live close to the sea, and each day is a new one
Indigo – denim, night - soft denim is a cuddly joy, and night is a time of opportunities as the rigidness of daily life fades away
Violet – magic, richness - magic is everywhere if you know how to look, mostly in my daughter
Grey – sleep, neutral, peace - sleep brings peace and healing
Black – dreams, shadows, mystery - all fabulous with possibilities

Rainbow serpent

Finally got my acrylics out and did the rainbow serpent, really pleased with how it's turned out and it looks great reduced to ATC size. Have picked out and cut background fabrics, almost ready to go. The mixing for most of the colours wasn't hard, I really need more paints, a good green and blue were difficult to create. Add that to the expense of having a knackered T key on my laptop and I'll keep wishing!

Theme: favourite colour

Productive day in Aberdeen today, made it to both my ATC group and Aberdeen Art Gallery.

This month's theme is favourite colour. Usually it would be purple but actually I think my favourite colour is, as cj would put it, 'rainbow'. Time for a brainstorm. Things I love about:
red: love, warmth, blood relations, fire, courage, passion, freqency 480-405 THz
orange: still warmth, tangerines, tiggerine, life 510-480 THz
yellow: sunshine, daffodills, celandines, spring flowers, sand, buddhism 530-510 THz
green: growing things, hope, life, nature, spirit, youth, Islam 580-530 THz
blue blue: day, sea, sky, peace, my first blankie, sleep, blues 670-600 THz
indigo: comfy jeans, the night sky 670-700 THz
violet: violets, richness 700-790 THz

black: death (in a good way, peace), concealment
white: absence, lack, white page, snow

I love a rainbow (kaleidoscope, variegated, motely, psychdelic, vibrant, harlequin) as it is, today (well, last night) S rearranged my fruit teabags by colour and whilst I did laugh at him it did look damn good. 9 cards, 7 colours plus black and white?

Rainbows on Wikipedia - Rainbow serpent - aborginal, in control of water as most preciousresource in Australia, benevolent protector of its people, punisher of lawbreakers. Land, water, life, social, fertility. Greek and norse mythology, rainbow as a bridge. Bible - symbol of god's covenant with Noah.

At the top are two rainbows that I painted in acrylics on board, my effort at an aboriginal style rainbow serpent and a rainbow I created for cj.

Idea, 9 cards each with a rainbow serpent on, each with a background, 7 in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet with two more in black and white to make up the set. Use beads / sequins / metallic foil dots for aboriginal dots. Line space around serpent to make sure no colour blends in too much. Time to do some studies with my Rainforest book.

April theme ATCs

Dancer Pan

Finally finished off my ATCs (Artists Trading Cards) for this month's swap taking place tomorrow, I'm not usually so late. I go to a lovely group at the Seattle Quilt Company in Aberdeen once a month run for free by the very generous Fiona. Last month she showed us how to use foils so I duly bought some and have managed to use them in this set, they're actually very easy once you get used to them.

This month's theme was 'April' because I liked 'April Fool' and someone else liked 'April Showers' so 'April' was a compromise. ATCs are the size of playing cards and in fact playing cards were originally used for the backings, and I collect playing cards so using the jokers to illustrate 'April Fool' suited me perfectly. I don't have as many packs as I used to so, breaking my trend to date, there are only 2 designs in this set, one with and one without variations. These are my favourites, there were other jokers but most were a bit sinister. Dancer is from a beautiful reproduction pack of turn of the century art nouveau cards, and Pan from a Greek Mythology set I acquired on honeymoon in Rhodes.

I wanted to pad this set so scanned the two playing cards I liked into my computer, printed them off onto Crafty Computer Paper's wonderful sew on printable cotton, cut them out and layered spare fleece between the pictures and a backing of Pelmet Vilene. I couldn't quilt normally because of the stiffness of the Vilene so I stab stitched quilting round the designs and then stitched round the outside. If I'd had more time I would have liked to have hand stitched the edges, machine running stitch worked mostly fine but there were some pretty close calls on the edges.
Then I foiled the designs, I foiled all the staffs on the Pan cards and different elements of the Dancer cards, once I got the hang of the foil and leaving it to dry slightly I thought it worked really well.