The Evolution of the Peppered Moth

  

Not the most dramatic of pieces, is it?!

 

Maybe I’m being too literal here, but I felt it had to be subtle. You see the Peppered Moth is a lovely example of natural selection. Before the Industrial Revolution, the pale variety survived best as it hid from predators on light coloured trees. When the trees were darkened by soot and pollution, the darker moths flourished as the pale ones were now more easily picked off by birds. And today, with cleaner air again, it’s the pale ones who are becoming dominant again.  

 

So – most of my embroidered moths don’t show up much. On purpose. Perhaps not the greatest idea for a piece of art! But hey, Darwin is my hero, this idea has been driving me crazy for ages; I’ve got it out of my system now.

It’s machine embroidery on Lutradur and soluble fabrics.

Sample Diary - June

A bit of a struggle to keep up this month, with five samples to do and a week away, but I’ve just finished – and that means I’ve completed half the year!

Week 22 – flooded rice fields and greenhouses. FME on black sheer over white background, zapped before adding turquoise satin stitch.Week 23 – sea slug spines. Bundles of Tencel fibres, partly zigzagged over, joined at base by embellishing.

Week 24 – St Paul’s Cathedral, renovation unveiled. Flower stitcher, several patterns and colours in one (tiny!) motif.

Week 25 – Obituary of weaver Tadek Beutlich. FME on Romeo to imitate weaving, plus grass stalk.Week 26 – Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone. Wool fibres embellished onto Lutradur 30.

Back to work

Plunged straight back into textile art world this week.

Remember these?

Waiting on the doormat was their invitation to the Platform Gallery’s Lancs and Yorks Craft Open. Yay!

And today I did my stint stewarding at the Grassington Festival exhibition. Pleased to see two of my little bowls will be going to new homes. Met quite a few visitors, but also had plenty of time for a good close look at the art. It’s a mixed exhibition, but there’s a lot of textile art – two other members of Textilia III, Catherine Slater (felt) and Linda Dewart (paint and stitch), plus Gill Kirk’s free machine stitch on recycled fabrics (sorry, can’t find any links) and Agnis Smallwood’s woven and needle felted panels. This huge piece of Agnis’s is really striking:
Now I “just” have to get back into actually creating something...

(PS is this bigger text an improvement? Can't seem to alter it now anyway!)

The Isle of Skye

Just back from a lovely week in Skye. Such an amazing island, wild and beautiful, we’ve been many times but it just gets harder and harder to leave… sigh.

At high tide the sea came in to a few feet from our cottage window, so the view changed all the time and we didn’t even need the binoculars to watch the herons and grebes fishing.

Glorious wildflowers everywhere, including masses of my favourite foxgloves and flag irises. Inspiring colour palettes for stitching.

Standing on top of the Quiraing (see photo) we spotted whales in the bay way below and tore off to see them a bit closer. Probably Minke – as we last saw in Antarctica! We seem to like the same places ;-)