Spring is really getting underway now, and even up here on the often rather chilly Mendip Hills, as well as the daffodils that seem to smother every available open space, we have primroses, hyacinths, wallflowers and pansies. But my favourites are the tiny wild violets (above) with deep purple blooms that clamber up the steps to our garden gate. If you bend down and take a deep breath, their intense sweet fragrance is almost overwhelming.
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been busy working on projects for the April edition of the Bustle & Sew Magazine I’m often asked about what inspires my designs and I sometimes think it’s all too easy to simply say “the natural world around me.” True though that is, for me at least, it’s only part of the process.
The April Magazine includes a design to embroider a tin of sardines, as the first of the month is of course April Fool’s Day. In France the tradition is to pin a paper fish on the back of your victim – hence the sardines…
They’re stitched in lovely spring colours inspired by the prospect of the spring blossom season ahead, as well as a (very different) design for the same subject I came across in a French Magazine…
The magazine suggests turning your embroidery into the lid for a box of pastel coloured bonbons and chocolate sardines. I won’t be doing that although I haven’t quite decided what to do with my fish yet. It’s fair to say, however, that I probably wouldn’t have considered working my sardines in a somewhat similar spring-like pink and blue palette if I hadn’t come across this photograph. It is all too easy to find yourself unintentionally copying somebody else’s idea, but in this case I think my own sardines are very different to the French ones.
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