When bees are a buzzing.....

Now for something entirely different! This week has been wet,wet, wet. The light is beginning to improve however and the first daffodils are in the shops. £1 a bunch is the such a promise of Spring to come and such a good pounds worth of joy. The snowdrops are up and the first primrose has flowered. The birds have begun to sing in the mornings when I am getting up. I am working on the final piece for the exhibition - a summer border at Newark Park. I made the small sketches on a hot day in July. You remember those? Bees a buzzing and sun hats firmly on? I have to remind my chilblains about those days to come. I am revelling in the colours. Normally I work in the season as it happens but maybe with this it will contain a longing for the warmth and colour.

Winter quilt finished!

 When you finish a piece you see the things you did wrong and would change another time but overall I like this cloth that has taken years to work on and has lots of myself stitched into it.

 Black tailed godwit

 and avocet from Slimbridge WWT bird watching days

and small bird you have to hunt to find. Lots of different textures from machine embroidery and hand stitching . Aprox 45 cm square. It will be my largest piece at the Newark Park exhibition in March.

Stitching at the Guild at 51. Glos Guild of Craftsmen.

A couple of photos of me stitching at the Guild gallery yesterday. I was putting some running stitches into the borders, keeping it simple because it was quite busy for a Thursday January day. The running stitches feel like water below, sky above and reeds on the sides.

winter quilt - work in progress.

 I am continuing to work on the Winter Quilt.

 Putting it under the machine embroidery needle to decorate some seams,

 adding a few little birds that you have to hunt to find.

Putting some running stitches in the borders to even out some wrinkles. It will still have plenty of those wrinkles but hey haven't we all? Really like the texture that has developed. I am taking it with me to Cheltenham today because it is my turn at the Gallery at 51 ( we all do some stewarding each) hope to be able to get some more stitches in those borders.

spring green.

 A dreary week of greyness outside, everyone has a cold or the flu, but I finished the spring green piece I began last May. It is long and thin so not ideal for photography. Above the whole piece and below, details. I am going to call it 'when cow parsley edges the lanes' 34cmx 10cm.

Winter quilt

 You may remember this winter quilt of bare branches and tiny patches with running stitches, well I am working to finish it now for the exhibition.

 There is now a swan in the top left

and a heron in the bottom right corner. In my mind I have the Gerald Manley Hopkins words ringing,
'o let them be left, wildness and wet, Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.'
They are written on the wall at Slimbridge Wetland Centre and I associate Winter with trips bird watching to see the Bewick swans and other wild birds that fly in.
I am also trying to do a little mark making each day- working on a little book.

Jan 2nd 2018 mark making.

 Back in the studio after quite a long break I went wild with paint and mark making. I was thinking about sedimentary layers. In the ground and in the mind. On paper and on fabric. 

 These are my finger prints on tissue paper, bonded onto fabric and stitched.

But I liked the back best- more minimal. Pent up creative drive exploding!