Hot summer days … small embroidery projects

It is hot today, 24th July … I am resigned to being still and finishing some new projects while the sun beats down outside, though here on top of the hills above the Romney Marsh there is a thick breeze, pretending to give relief, but really playing about making the corners hotter. The sea beckons later though for a swim in the brine …

So here is a little thing or two which I am making into some more box kits, embroidery done and now just doing the packaging and instructions … this is our quiet month as everyone thinks of other things till the months lead us into Autumn.

First, this little hanging scissor and needle keeper, 14cm high. With small pocket addition on the back, and of course being felt you can use to stick your needles and pins in above. You can buy from my ETSY shop here and soon it will be uploaded onto the website here.

Update (4th August 2019). This wonderful Basket scissor and needle keeper is now available to buy here!

 

 

I have also been working on a range of building embroideries, and these decorations are the first to be ready …Since I was a small child able to draw I have loved drawing buildings, cottages. My father Roger would take me out around Kent on painting trips and I would draw what he was painting in my childish way and still have his and my own paintings from that time, can remember the quiet both of us in our own little world while concentrating on our own lines and interpretations … that world was full of crumbling cottages then, those same buildings now the place of the wealthy all spick and span with shiny cars in the drives, but then they were real farms, full of farm debris, old oil cans, chickens dotted about, ivy flapping out of broken windows.

On a recent trip to Essex I made a mental note of the pargetting on village houses and I suppose that resonates here …. we were on a trip to Saffron Walden to see the wonderful Edward Bawden exhibition and the exhibition was overwhelming to say the least but the town all bedecked with it’s colour and decorated buildings was very pleasing to see … it was about this time of year too.

Everyone who knows me well knows how I cannot resist a little wooden village, something from my childhood which has stayed with me. Those little nets of buildings, a train, a church … a few trees sometimes a flat faced person, and cow …

I am working on a cushion kit at the moment to go with this collection, and two sampler sized kits too. But for inspiration for embroidery, here is where you need to look …