Owen Davies workshop

Yes, last weekend I went away to Bishop Burton agricultural college for a workshop with Owen Davies, learning how to make a 3-D embroidered garden! If you ever get the chance to go on one of his workshops ... jump at it! He is a brilliant tutor - inspiring, fun, generous, talented .. ok you get the picture .. I'm a huge fan.

For those of you who have never heard of him, this is Owen's most famous garden

It's actually even more stunning when you can see it up close - and yes, those gates really are made in wrought iron.

He had decorated the room we were working in with mood boards all around the walls and green silk covered the table on which our embroidery frames were clamped. There were huge wicker baskets filled with embroidery threads from which we could choose our colours, and a vintage suitcase filled with old embroidery magazines and books for sale.

Just a small selection of the mood boards. I chose to set my garden in autumn so chose hot shades for my flower beds.  I was thinking of dahlias, late summer daisies, berries, lilies and leaves changing colour. You get the picture from these pages taken from the journal/workbook I'm making of my garden.

This is the complete garden from which he took our design. We are working just the central motif.

Here's where I got to by the end of the weekend.

 And here's where I am now, ready to start on the topiary hedges. I'm thinking that I shall make brick walls too and put my garden inside a box.

And finally, here's a little posy for you all from my garden.

A trip to London and new cottages

Sorry I've been away for a while but I've been down to London for a few days so I'm going to begin this post with a few of the photos I took whilst I was there.

My son and I had tickets for centre court at Wimbledon - on the day that Federer left the competition. Such an exciting experience ... and another one ticked off the list of things to do whilst I still can. Do you have one of those lists? I don't call it a bucket list, though I know that some people do.

Yes, we were a long way back but actually we had a brilliant view of all the action.

I also made a visit to the William Morris Gallery. I love his designs and found lots of inspiration for embroideries whilst I was there. The gallery is situated inside a park, and as the weather was glorious I spent quite a while looking around the gardens there too.

No photos but my daughter and I went to see Swan Lake at the Royal Albert Hall - my favourite ballet (it's actually the 9th time I've seen it - all by different ballet companies) and with 127 dancers in total, including 60 swans, this production was certainly impressive!

I've also been busy with my 1/48th scale cottages. There are two in a row this time - one is tiny and the other has obviously been extended at some time as it's twice the size.

I've put false walls in the back of some of the rooms so it appears that there is at least a staircase to the upstairs level.

 This is the ground floor of the smaller cottage - complete with cooker and dresser...

... and here is the bedroom - tiny but there will be enough room for a bed and chest of drawers at least and perhaps a dressing table in front of the window.

The larger cottage now has a separate kitchen with a cooker and sink unit (I still need to put taps on the sink). Probably some wall shelves will complete this room.

Lots of space in the living room for bookshelves, sideboard and comfy armchairs.

Upstairs is a large bedroom and ...

... a tiny bathroom.

The front wall has been covered with air-drying clay with the smaller cottage being given a stonework finish while the larger cottage has plain rendered walls.

There is still lots of work to do on these but I'll show my progress over the coming week or so.

Playing with rainbows

That's the title of my latest fabric book. I've shown you some of these pages as they've progressed over the past six months or so but now the book is finished at last. For those of you who are new to my blog (or indeed if you're not new but have forgotten - and who could blame you?) this is my attempt at stitching intuitively. The only rule I set myself when I started out on this particular venture was to not unpick anything so, if I didn't instantly like something I'd done I just kept stitching away at it until it improved. The idea was to play about with colour clashes in silk and beads and threads and see what emerged. So here is the result ...

 

I've also been busy organising my studio shelves (again). They were actually quite organised before but there was such a mixture of plastic boxes which really didn't look good so I bought some cheap box files and covered them in toning fabrics - pink of course!

I'm so much happier with the way things look now.
Whilst I was in the mood for tidying and prettying, I covered all my sketch books and work books too.

These look much better on the shelf too with their nice new jackets.

What with all that tidying, and trying to get on top of the gardening in the decent weather, not to mention a trip to London, there's not been much happening in the miniatures department but I did manage to fill this set of shelves with haberdashery items. This will be going into my Etsy shop very soon...

 

together with this sweet set of fabric covered luggage.

Today is a day for wild flowers

Today is not a day for working. Today is a day for sitting by the garden pond and watching the water surface disturbed by pond skaters, tadpoles and frogs.

 

 Today is not a day for seeing weeds and feeling the need to stir to pull them from the ground. Today is a day for seeing wild flowers.

Today is a day for seeing the beauty of secret places - even in a tiny space.

Today is a day for reflection on the joy of a sunny day and the colours in my garden.

Today I can dream that the sunshine will last all summer, that the vegetable plot will produce a rich harvest, that the slugs and snails will not destroy the new shoots. Today I can block out the sound of the traffic 15 yards up the road and imagine myself in my cottage garden in the countryside.

Yes dear blogland friends, the sun is shining here in Yorkshire and all is right with the world.

Today I have two completed pieces of lace to show you...
 

 The first is my hexagonal box ...

 ... finished at last.

You've seen most of the motifs before.

But here they are all stitched to the box that I made and topped with a lace covered bead.

The second is a lace covered mushroom. I love mushrooms and have quite a collection of hand turned wooden ones which I've picked up at a number of various shows. This one was intended to be a cane topper for the garden but I think this is a much better use for it.

I hope the sun's shining in your life today too.

Another Casalguidi style bag and more

Still with that Casalguidi embroidery workshop in mind, I've been making another piece of this type of embroidery. This is not at all what we'll be expecting the people in the workshop making, of course, but I do feel that it helps to have a few pieces to show folks what is possible. My mind is also obviously still in the purse/pocket/bag kind of groove as this is what I made ...

Very much along the lines of a 17th century sweete bag and with a square of hardanger stitched in for good measure. This may well find its way into the 17th century exhibition next year too.

And, of course, there's also lace ...

This time going along with my Russian theme. This is not the fabric that these colourful little matryoshka dolls will finally be mounted on and they will have embroidered faces, but I thought I'd show them to you as a work in progress.

A further work in progress is this book of colour experiments in silk and beads ...

which I'm working on in and amongst everything else when the mood takes me to do something completely different from my normal embroidery.

The only 'rules' I've set myself are to work intuitively without prior planning and to unpick nothing so ... if something doesn't look quite right when I've done it, rather than unpick, I'm just adding more until it starts to look 'right' again.

Some of those casalguidi techniques are showing up here like all those wrapped cords...

... and padded threads.

These little patches will eventually be stitched onto a silk page in a different colour and there'll be around 8 or 10 pages in total - depends on when I feel it's complete. Watch this space!