lol I just checked the "historical posts" on my blog (because it's been literally years since I posted here); and the piece I'm going to talk to you about today is one that I started whittering about in 2018. 

Six years ago!

Anyway, I've been working on this piece on and off as the mood struck me, with the bulk of the work being done in 2024. 

I did the last stitches earlier today, and thought it was "done"; but maybe not?

I'll explain as we go. 

So, if my math is correct, 15 years ago I bought 4 little bird panels from Linda Kemshall. (Or maybe it was Laura? I can't remember.) I bought them because I loved them, and initially intended to just frame them; but when I actually received them, I was like..." I could do something with these."

*ahem* Of course I had no idea what the "something" might be; so they languished. 

Then I went through this phase about 10 years ago where I was printing watercolour on fabric. (I really need to get back to that; it was one of my very favourite things to do.)

And then, six years ago, I was sorting through allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll of my various personally hand-dyed, hand printed, hand painted and watercolour printed fabric (I hope the abundance of "els" really concretizes the unbelievable amount of such fabric I had); and decided to either earmark it for an actual project or donate it. 

In doing so, I managed to decrease such fabrics to 2 bins. 

And in doing so, I found some watercolour printed fabric* that perfectly matched Ms. Kemshall's (Laura or Linda to be determined) birds. 

Is all it takes to see something with fresh eyes.

I've got more work to do...

I already had a couple of 8x10 pieces of cotton muslin that had already been fused to batting and had a coat of gesso applied. I made them a few years back in preparation for painting, before I knew that I could just apply acrylic paint directly to fabric!

As I needed to get these done lickety split (I was up in the studio at 6:30 before leaving, whipping something together quickly to take!) I decided to work with aquarelles - so having a gesso'd background was perfect.

As you can see, I just lightly stroked on some colour with the side of the aquarelle.


And then I brushed them with a large-ish watercolour paintbrush loaded with water. I had one that wasn't clean, and made that dark grey mark, which initially made me gasp; but turned out to be a happy accident. I liked it and added it to both pieces.

The watercolour dried to the touch almost immediately, which was great, because I had to pop them in the folder, into my bag, and off we went!


I had this idea for an embroidered box behind the tree. Ordinarily, I would have stitched the box first and then added the tree, but I had to go, so I applied the tree first and then started stitching.


Here I've added some little flowers...

Generally, when I do a figure, I sketch him in my sketch book, trace over him/her with tracing paper, use the tracing paper as a pattern, and then cut out the figure on my lutradur (or whatever substrate it is that I'm using).

But that's a fairly laborious process, and this was just a little rabbit, so I decided to draw him directly on the lutradur this time. It meant that I had to draw him twice (I screwed up the first one), but it was still much faster this way.

And then it was time to paint. First I picked my paint palette...