Tag: hearts

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ATCs are my new addiction

ATC with a heart of red buttons, outlined by black embroidery. The background is irregularly filled with French knots in red and black

ATC with a rainbow of heart on zebra striped fabric. A thick strand of rainbow yarn frames the piece and the word LOVE is written in three places

Ever since I have been asked to be a part of the 100 artists event, I have been addicted to make one ATC after another… Wait, what am I talking about?

An ATC is an Artist Trading Card, with the set size of 2.5″x3.5″ and it can be made in any medium – painting, drawing, paper crafts, knitting, crochet, embroidery, leatherwork, whatever you can think of. Besides the size there are not really any rules – just you can NEVER sell them, they can only be traded. It’s a great way to trade art with someone, even international shipping won’t cost much.

So, now that you know what an ATC is, let’s talk about what I like so much about them:

Well, I’m still pretty new to embroidery, but on the small scale of an ATC, I can experiment with techniques, styles and different stitches. Much less daunting than working on a large project and they are done fairly quickly.

So far I’ve made one including tiny buttons (featured image for this post), one on zebra printed fabric with rainbow hearts (above), one with soft, romantic colours and lace on coffee stained fabric (below) and one that’s colourful, punk and a mix of fabrics (bottom of this post).

ATC on coffee stained fabric in pale pink, green and brown, with a bit of cream coloured lace. Bottom left has a pink heart with a brown one behind, frame is done in green. Top right corner has a multi-coloured pink rose

I have many more ideas I want to try, but I think that’s more than enough loved themed ones for the moment. But there’s so many other themes, I’m sure those won’t be the last ones you’ll see from me.

Well, I actually know I will make at last one more, in a co-stream next Friday, Feb 18 on Twitch. We haven’t decided on a theme yet, but we’ll each make an ATC and trade them once they are finished.

Have you ever made ATCs? Or thinking of starting with them? Let me know in the comments.

Punk looking ATC. From bottom left to top right corner, it has zebra fabric, black fabric, a piece of bright green and one of bright yellow. LOVE is written in white on the black part, the O is a heart cut from leopard faux fur fabric

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Subscriber hearts for Twitch

Two handknit hearts, one in red, one in purple and green stripes

6 handknit hearts in various colours are arranged in front of a white wall

I love to look at all the subscriber hearts I knit since I started on Twitch.

If you don’t follow my streams on Twitch yet: I knit a heart for every first time subscriber and they can pick a colour for me to use. And because even as a designer, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, I use a pattern by Hunter Hammersen called Palpitation for them. It’s a lot of fun to knit them, and I love the visual reminder of all the love and support I receive. So, as long as I can keep up with making them, I will keep doing so.

By now, I have a big vase full of them and have decided to send them to the subscribers after a total of 12 months subscription. But I’ll still have to get a second container to keep them in, but shopping currently isn’t high on my list of things to do with the high Covid numbers and my asthma. So it will have to wait for a while.

If you want to check out what I do on Twitch, or maybe get a heart of your own, join me for one of my upcoming streams. My current schedule is:

  • Tuesday, 3 pm CET – crafting on a current project and chatter
  • Friday, 6:30 pm CET – crafting on a current project and chatter
  • Sunday, 4 pm CET – subscriber hearts, I read a fairy tale and chatter

Currently I’m working on an embroidered dragon portrait during the week, which I’m making for an art exchange, next project will be a crochet doll of someone’s original character. I’m sure I’m not going to run out of ideas any time soon.

But now I need to hurry and make the most of the current sunshine – I urgently need to take a new photo of available yarns for the subscriber hearts, because some have been used up and I have new leftovers to add to the selection.