Wednesday 29 May 2013

Springtime Artwork

How unpredictable is the weather in the UK at the moment? It's almost June and I'm sat here wrapped up in two blankets! After a beautiful Bank Holiday Weekend, where my husband burnt the back of his neck because he forgot to apply sunscreen there (silly billy), it's turned most chilly and hasn't stopped raining. This Spring has certainly been a mixed bag. I am eagerly awaiting my alliums to burst into flower to add some colour to the garden. I'm by no means at all green fingered but I loved them so much I planted some bulbs a few years ago and they were certainly worth the effort - not that is was all that difficult. They are just starting to open and each day I look forward to seeing how they are progressing. In the mean time I'll have to settle for a picture from the Royal Horticultural Society (here's a link to their advice on growing alliums- trust me it's not hard if I can do it http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?PID=316)


With the alliums comes the butterflies. I truly love butterflies, they were the theme at my wedding and I now have them dotted round the house.
Here's a wonderful, little webpage  about which flowers are great to attract butterflies and includes all three of my favourites- alliums, chives and cosmos- there's a variety of cosmos called "Chocolate Cosmos", it's a beautiful dark browny red and yep, you guessed it, smells of chocolate- what's not to love?!

To get a little taste of Spring on the dull days like today I have sewn a little canvas. Using freehand machine embroidery and some fabric with a large flower print, I "drew" round an individual flower motif with stitches and in a contrasting colour wrote "flutter by Butterfly". Then using some transfer paper, the kind used with your home printer and a iron to transfer the image to fabric, I transferred a picture of a butterfly to some plain white cotton and cut it out. The great thing is the transfer process gives the fabric a bit of structure. I added a few beads and stitched the body of the butterfly to the picture, allowing the wings to stand out.
It's a little bit of Springtime when the outside thinks otherwise! Though the photo makes the colours seem more muted than they really are
I hope you like it?
Until next time, craft in earnest, Craftin' Ernest x

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