Mouse Plant

I've grown Arisarum proboscideum on the edge of my woodland beds for some years now.  The tiny brown and white flowers that appear among the leaves at this time of year look just like a family of mice peeping out.  Last year one of the leaves developed a variegation and now a few more have the same colouring.  The real treat this year is that the plant has produced a striped flower.  I have a tiny striped 'mouse' peeping out from a group of patterned leaves.



More Samples

Sticking with the fields theme, but focusing in on a specific ploughed area I came up with this sample and the smaller one below.  Firstly I dyed some scrim and some rafia with strong black coffee, then couched strips of each onto a scrim base.  Some of the couching is done with a gold thread to give a bit of glitter and maybe a hint of frost on the field.
I like the way the stitching distorts the fabric and I think it does achieve the look of furrows across a field.

This is a tiny interpretation of the same ploughed field, worked on quite a stiff canvas.  I just cut some lengths of a thick, soft string, frayed the ends and laid the lengths on a scrap piece of canvas.  Next I painted the canvas and the string, but not the frayed ends.  Then I couched the string down with a gold thread and added beads.  If the couched string represents the furrows the beads would be the bits of chalk and flint thrown up by the plough.

Summer Stitching

With all the sunshine we've had over the past few days I've been tempted to take a frame out into the garden for some counted thread work.  I've completed the design but it'll probably have to wait until the autumn to be made into something.  A cushion perhaps.



Magnolia



Lysichiton



I enjoy making embroideries in three dimensions and a stroll round my garden has given me inspiration for two new vessels.  I have a lot of work ahead!

A Sample Piece

Part of my work in progress for the previously mentioned exhibition.  To me there are two outstanding aspects of our part of the new National Park.  One is the rolling fields, the other is the distinctive range of plants that flower on the chalky soils.  At this point in the year the fields are beginning to be green as crops start to show, but they have only recently lost their winter clothing when the earth is bare and the shapes of individual fields stand out.
This sample is made using ordinary brown wrapping paper, scrunched and flattened out, re-scrunched and re-flattened, over and over until it becomes almost like a soft fabric.  I've machine stitched a fairly haphazard grid over the paper to represent the fields, then gently wetted the paper and carefully torn away small areas between lines of stitching.
I'm pleased with this sample.  It has the abstract touch that I was hoping for.  The next sample I plan to work on is, again, an interpretation of winter fields, but this time using scrim.

Something Different.

Something I 'm not normally drawn to do is paint instead of stitch.  In this piece I've covered the canvas with scrunched up scrim, added some teased out fibres of Mulberry bark and applied gesso, thickly in some places, thinly in others.  I had expected to stitch into it, but found myself using acrylic paints instead.  It is an aberration, but I rather like it.  At present I have it on the wall above my work-bench.  Some days I rotate it, which gives it a different feel.  I quite like that it hasn't yet decided which way up it wants to be!
In other news, my TMA has come back, with the highest mark I've yet had on this module.  This is good, obviously, but it's also bad as I had more or less decided not to bother with the rest of the assignments.  So much to write in so little time means other parts of life are neglected.  I don't need to complete the course, I don't need the qualification, I only started it for fun.

My New Home!

Three days of sun have given me a chance to catch up with my spring seed sowing.  Previously this would have ment camping out in a corner of the greenhouse, but last autumn I aquired a purpose built potting shed!  My little palace is fully equiped with a bench under the sloping window and shelves on the back wall.  Three transparent bins, under the bench, hold compost and a large potting tray keeps everything tidy.  I've even brought in an old wooden chair for coffee breaks!
The greenhouse is now bursting with freshly sown trays of flowering annuals and early veggies.  All my autumn sown seedlings have been moved out into cold frames until they are ready to be planted in beds and borders.
Last year our tiny village found itself included in a new National Park and I've been invited, by a local stitching group, to produce a few small pieces for an exhibition to mark our new found status.  The idea is to interpret aspects of the Park in stitch, in as abstract a manner as we wish.
In other news my latest A215 Creative Writing Assignment for the Open University has been sent off and I await the result.  This one called for 1,500 words of Life Writing and I was quite pleased with it, but I can never be sure how my tutor will respond.

Experimental Hand Embroidery

James Hunting's stunning embroidery.

Three days have rarely flown by so quickly as they did this week, on a hand embroidery course tutored by the immensely talented James Hunting.  Regular visitors to this blog will know my own work is small and detailed, but James takes delicate to a whole new level.  His stunningly beautiful flowers are worked in single strands of embroidery threads, either stranded cottons or silks.
His teaching covered all the basics of linear stitches, blanket stitches and couching, through a few modified stitches to french knots and raised stitching.  We worked mostly on linen and organdie.  James proved to be a very patient mentor. 
The embroidery I have chosen to show is unusual in that it is beaded and doesn't feature the piecing together of different linens which usually forms part of his larger work.