Seeds and Grasses.

When will I learn that it really doesn't pay to leave product photography for another day when the conditions are pretty much perfect at the time of making said decision? Yesterday there was soft, golden sunlight where today there is only a dull, flat light which makes it so difficult for a very amateur photographer such as myself to get the product images I need for my website. Hey ho, no doubt such things will eventually stick in my mind and I won't allow myself to be seduced by the thought of lazily quaffing wine on the courtyard as the sun descends possibly not to return for far too long...hmm, or maybe I won't.



So, here is the Grasses Lavender Cushion, the first of my new range. It is one of two lavender cushions inspired by the grasses and seedheads I see everywhere I go at the moment. Whether I am in our garden, roaming around the lanes or by the sea the colours and textures of autumn seem to leap out at me and this is my interpretation of what I see.



I have changed the way I work slightly for these pieces using a mix of freehand machine and hand embroidery to get the effect I was after, that of wispy grasses waving in the breeze layered with the bulkier, denser forms of seeds and seed cases.



The second cushion - aptly named Seed Lavender Cushion - also has a little applique, my working of the granite rocks glimpsed as a backdrop to so much of the landscape in Cornwall.



A little close-up of embroidery detail.



Each cushion is approximately 12cm square, quite small to be called a cushion really, but somehow sachet or pad didn't fit with how I feel about them. I have given them each a string handle to enable them to be hung if desired rather than tucked away in a drawer(far too pretty for that methinks!) My hope is that whoever sees them will view them as miniature pieces of art (if that doesn't sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet?), something which will add to their home and be a little heirloom in the making. Well, that's my hope anyway.



Each one will obviously vary slightly due to the nature of handmade items, but that is the charm of something handcrafted isn't it: something unique and worked from the heart, which these certainly were. More items to come over the next few days - if the light returns that is!

A September Morn.

It is cloudy here now after the most beautiful start to the day. I wanted to show you the things that are inspiring my work at the moment and so took these pictures early this morning after Isabella and I had taken Lucy to school. Seedheads and grasses of every description catch my eye, from golden grasses



to rumex of the darkest red



and as for these...oh, how beautiful they are.



Thay seem to change from soft and downy



to harder, more scratchy in texture - does that make sense?



Such amazing colours from vibrant green



to wheaten yellow.




From starkly structural



to spindly and delicate.



Pure inspiration. If only what I see in my head would leap onto the fabric - or, read another way, if only I could stop scribbling ideas and leave it at the thousand or so designs I already have. My business head says the new range is ready to go, items made and set to be showcased, and yet I feel nervous.



There is a change evident in this range, a slightly more 'grown-up' feel for want of a better description and I am nervous at the reaction to it. Silly and not very business-like of me I know, but perhaps it is because these designs speak to something in me, the bit of me that loves autumn and the restful feel that comes with the softened tones of nature, the fires lit in the lengthening dusk, the soft-and-sad song of birds on quiet mist shrouded rivers. All these things I love and I hope they are evident in some small way in the stitches worked, the gentler tones weaving through the cloth.



I hope to show my new range next week after a little final tweaking (though heavens knows I have probably built it into something it isn't now and thus will regret mentioning it at all!). In the meantime,



have a lovely weekend everyone x