“Brown Grasses”. It was created from Bogoak tweed bought in Donegal Town, Ireland at McGees. It’s gorgeous fabric and it’s a real pleasure sewing it. I started this piece a great deal of time ago and it looked like it was one of those that might languish forever scrumpled up in a box almost to be forgotten. I couldn’t really connect with the original imagery I’d wanted to create so I just started over using the hand-stitching I’d done as a jumping off point. I machine stitched into the tweed using pre-programmed stitches. Next I added some machine stitched pre-spattered bits of silk to make “grass” and bonded on some painted poppy seedhead shapes, also in silk dupion.

I went a bit mad with the hand stitching as I find it hard to stop doing it once I get going. It’s so therapeutic they should prescribe it on the NHS! Doing feather and chain stitches puts me in a trance (of delight). The threads I used were a mixture of cotton 6 stranded floss and beautifully dip-dyed silk threads. I just love the colour transitions as they lines of stitching appear. I think I added some gold and copper foil bits on top I can’t remember which order they went in now. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. However, I’m glad I stopped when I did, it’s got lots and lots of texture.