Why I love linen

 

The soft and warm crumpled feel of linen. Instantly comfortable and cosy. To me it is the ultimate fabric (not only because it comes from a plant with a blue flower - any blue flower always wins me over) but it just fills the need for that informal enveloping comfort which modern life makes us crave. 

When hand sewing linen it takes a while to get used to the billowy floppiness but persevere and you get to enjoy the subtle variations of the cloth as you stitch. 

Wearing and washing linen is equally good for the senses. Yes you could iron it but why, when after a little time of wearing, any slight creases soften and once again you get the cosy.

Linen takes a lot less water to produce than cotton so it is better eco wise. 

And did I mention the plant has blue flowers?

Hello again!

Well hello again. It's been a while. I won't list all the things that have happened over this time because I am going to be positive!  Instead I'll quickly mention how my work has changed. I've taken up hand sewing. I had known for a while that I loved simple sewing of items like lavender bags and the calming repetition of stitching with needle and thread. Then, all of a sudden it became something of great importance in my life. Sewing can be picked up or put down in a moment while all sorts of things are going on in the background. It does not need much space or mess being made (although I still manage to make threads appear all over the house). And it is a process of steps that inherently give you time to consider what the next ones will be. You can create something from even the smallest of scraps and that in itself feels very restorative. 

That's all for know but I will share some more soon.  

 

Block Print Papers

One of my favourite mediums is block printing and I love designing block printed patterns for paper and fabric.  I would love to see these as fabrics too. You get such lovely textures with block printing from the fact that you are repeatedly printing the same block again and again. the pressure you use or the amount of ink you get on the block means that the overall effect has a softness and a natural feel to it.

Cotton Reels

This is a line drawing that I added colour to digitally. It was inspired by a tin of vintage cotton reels that belonged to my Nan - so many colours on beautiful old wooden spools. I would like to make it into a fabric one day!

Pattern Tree Painting

Gouache painting in bright colours! I love the matte quality of gouache paint. I was experimenting with a folk art feel and patchwork textures and patterns.

Great British Seaside Illustrations

These two illustrations were part of my project on the British Seaside. They started out as line drawings and then were scanned on to the computer and put together digitally with added vector elements and textures. The seashells illustration is available as a print in my shop.

Toy Horse Illustration

My sister and I had one of these little horses each when we were girls. I called mine Pin because we were reading a book at school about a boy who had a china horse called Pin - nice logic when you are six! I did the illustration below a few years ago. I made the border to give a bit of a fairground art feel. The drawings were done with a Faber-Castell PITT artist pen with a brush nib and a fine liner and I scanned them and put it all together digitally.