Wild flowers of the Cotswolds in stitch.

I have been working on this piece for 3 years. Not continually but as July comes around and these flowers are on the ridge in the hay meadow close by. Finally finished it ! The flowers are cushion calamint, scabious, bladder campion, knapweed, ox-eye daisy, and lesser bindweed or convolvulus. The butterfly is a common blue or though they are not so common any more. It is 40 cm x 14 cm - so long and thin, not ideal for photography. Trying to finish a few summer pieces before we get deeply into Autumn.

 

Summer cloth - slow stitching and hand embroidery.

I have been working on this summer cloth for the last 6 weeks. very enjoyable too ! The circles came from my large circular meditation cloth - same motif around the border. I used colours from the garden and wild flowers. The birds, butterflies etc outlines came from the drawings on tracing paper I make to transfer drawing to cloth. I end up with pages and pages of these outlines and they are beautiful in thier own right. I just put the ideas togther to contrast.

The idea is to conjure up all the things I like about summer. An evocation of the season. A rejoicing too. As it takes so long to stitch it like recording time within the work. Looking at some pieces I can remember the music or story I was listening to as I stitched. Thats why embroiderers were sometimes accused of magic and witchcraft. They trapped things into the stitches. Lets hope I have caught summer here and can loook at it in the long dark cold days of winter. It will be shown at Quenington next June.

 

Perpetual Journal August 2020

August journal. Its been a busy month and now its over we have a new kitchen so its all been worthwhile. We have never had a new fitted kitchen and all our appliances were very old so this has been a complete change. Meanwhile in the great outdoors, the seasons have moved on and cooler nights and an abundance of fruits and berries means Autumn has come.