April samples

18/14 Lichen
I've been studying the lichens on our shore - the more you look, the more you find, and the closer you get the more beautiful the colours and textures.

For my lichen sample I coloured a piece of Tyvek yellow quickly with Neocolour II, then sandwiched it in baking parchment and bubbled it with an iron. I free machined it onto a mustardy felt , just scribbling round the bubbles and craters to attach and define areas.

 

Then some crusty cable stitch, working from the back with variegated Anchor pearl cotton (1304) on the bobbin.

I was going to add some hand embroidery but in the end I decided it didn’t need any more.

 

18/15 Coltsfoot

This time of year is all about yellow – daffodils, celandines, primroses, gorse, coltsfoot. And it’s so welcome and sunny after the winter, even if yellow is actually one of my least favourite colours.

 

On a walk just along the coast at Ashaig, the dead grasses underfoot were studded with bright yellow flowers a bit like dandelions. Coltsfoot produces its flowers before its leaves, so they really stand out.

I made the flowers by free machine embroidery on soluble fabric, plus French knots for the centres. The background is assorted yarns free machined in a sandwich of soluble film.

 

18/16 Wind turbines

Wind turbine blades play a big part in life on south Skye at the moment. It’s not about where we get our electricity, it’s the hold ups and lack of parking caused by transport of the huge blades from the dock at Kyle, via Broadford airfield, to the wind farm project miles away on the mainland. It’s actually pretty amazing to watch these extreme loads being manoeuvred round the narrow roads and bridges – as long as you’re not in a rush to get anywhere! This week two ships full have been sitting just outside Kyle, in sight from our house, waiting to dock since the weekend.

I wanted clean, simple motifs so I decided to hand stitch my turbines on paper using fine machine embroidery thread. The centres are silver cup sequins. I do love the crispness of stitch on paper, and the visible perforations.

 

18/17 Great Northern Diver

Great Northern Divers (aka loons!) have been coming in close to the shore here recently. Beautiful birds, amazing patterns. Sample using FME on velvet.