Another blog about inspiration and process!

But this time it’s about my ‘hobby’, which loosely comes under the heading ‘embroidery’. Loosely!

For a couple of years now I have made small embroideries, from mushrooms and fruit, to beetles and cell structure. Mainly for my own entertainment, but I have done a craft fair and there’s a very basic website and etsy shop.

But this last weekend, which was wet and miserable in Bristol I decided to get my sketchbook out. My dear friend Kate Tarling (check out her amazing work here), gave me a sketch-a-day book for my birthday, and I’ve (honestly) done a few quick pencil sketches. But it’s small, so I got out my big book and started drawing.

I prefer to sketch using a pen rather than paper - it’s impossible to be hesitant, or to go back and make changes when it’s in pen. I drew poppy heads, and mushrooms, and then pears… and more pears… and three pages of pears!

Then I couldn’t decide what to do with the sketches, embroider? Appliqué? Print? Free motion machine? Wire? So I decided to do all of them! I got out some of my ecodyed fabric stash and started messing about with them. I also copied the pears on to transfer film and stuck one down.

Usually I get stuck at this point…. what to do, how to do it, but this time I felt liberated! For once I hadn’t meticulously planned and yet something interesting had come out, poured out intact! Overnight one of the pictures that I had put on Instagram in the afternoon garnered over 200 likes, whereas normally I’d receive between 70-90! Never underestimate the power of instagram - my absolute favourite social media!