Herb Garden Collection

At the moment I am busy working on a new collection of fabric designs for Makower UK. Unfortunately I can't show you these designs at the moment because of copyright protection. I can however show you my "Herb Garden" Collection which will make it's debut at the quilt market in Houston this month. It seems ages since I delivered the final artwork to the Makower headquarters in Henley-on-Thames, most people are surprised that a fabric design actually starts life as a painted piece of paper.

Today I saw it for the first time in print, always an anxious moment. Unlike an illustration for a print reproduction on paper, these fabric designs have to be translated into separate screens, one screen per colour. When you consider that some of the designs contain eighteen different colours, you can imagine the skill of the printer who has to perfectly register each and every colour.

Here are two of my favourite designs from the collection, I hope you like them!

I used some of the images from this collection to make my one of my little artist's books. These designs form a decorative panel called a nine square or label design. A term which will be familiar to those of you who quilt. You can see more of these images in my "Herb Garden" miniature book in my Etsy shop.

October Illuminations of Nature

This illustration is my offering for the month of October, it is part of a series of work entitled "Illuminations of Nature". This piece was inspired by the poem "To Autumn" by John Keats. (You can click on the image to see more detail).

I chose to include a jay because I love their colours, in particular, the tiny blue, stripy wing feathers. When I was working on "The Acorn's Story" I found out that jays play an important part in the life cycle of an oak tree. The jay will store away acorns rather like a squirrel, in crevices and sometimes it will bury them beneath the earth, these sometimes germinate if conditions are favourable, providing of course that it doesn't decide to eat them first!

Dreams and Elderberries

There are a great many elderberries around at the moment, beautiful, shiny and resplendent. It is said that the elderberry is the Englishman's grape, not only is the fruit used but also the flowers make flavoured drinks. The illustration above is taken from "An Illustrated Address Book" and shows a corner of the first garden my husband and I ever owned.

I was reading on another blog, about dreams and the number seven; the house number was seventy seven which made the connection in my mind with painting. The garden was a typical terraced house garden, very long and narrow. At the end of garden was an allotment and tall elderberry bushes and hawthorn trees formed a hedge making the garden very private. A blackbird sang there in the evening, it was our little piece of heaven. I often dream that I am back in that house, the dream always follows the same pattern. I walk down the garden and discover outbuildings, rooms, extensions that I did not know I had. I make elaborate and exciting plans to transform these buildings into studios, guest rooms, potting sheds, all manner of things. I continue my journey down the garden and discover pathways, streams, ponds and lakes, sometimes I find the sea shore. When I wake I am always rather disappointed that these things do not actually exist, I could make such good use of all that space!

I read somewhere that dreaming of rooms means unfulfilled potential, I have no idea what the water connection is, perhaps someone can enlighten me?

Gold Tooling

The latest workshop that I attended was entitled “Finishing for the frightened” and they don’t come more frightened than me! Finishing in this instance, referred to gold tooling, a skill, which I am convinced, takes a lifetime to perfect.

The tools, which we used, consisted of a wooden handle and a brass letter or pattern; using fillets or wheels to make linear patterns. We started by heating the metal tools on a stove, this proved to be problem number one, if you don’t heat the tool enough it will not transfer the gold onto the book, if you heat it too much you can melt away too much of the adhesive and produce an ugly effect. By trial and error, much spitting (to judge the temperature) we had to decide when the tools were ready. In case you are wondering, a letter “I” will not retain as much heat as a letter “M”, because of the amount of metal used in the formation of the letter. By now I think you may be able to understand the complexities and variables involved.

Our first practice was to try out the letter on fax paper, as this is heat sensitive you can get a good understanding of the amount of heat needed. When we had tried our hand at that we moved onto gold foil, which we used on pre prepared boards covered with book cloth. Gold foil is not actually gold, rather gold colour on an adhesive backing. The skill here is not only in ascertaining the correct temperature but applying the correct pressure and consistency of pressure over the area of each letter. Positioning the letters is also extremely difficult and something that I feel I would never master in a thousand lifetimes.


When we had made sufficient progress with the gold foil we moved onto real gold leaf and leather. Unlike the gold foil, the gold leaf needs to be adhered to a glare; (boards were covered with leather which had been treated with glare). These had prepared  for us beforehand so it was one less thing to worry about. I won’t attempt to explain the complexities involved in handling gold leaf except to say that a mere breath can wisp it away, it is so delicate and light. It is also very beautiful and now I am aware of the difference between foil and leaf, infinitely prefer the real thing.

I have posted my first feeble attempts for anyone who is interested. If nothing else they show how not to do it! As always I enjoyed the day and learnt so much at the workshop, it gave me a much greater appreciation of the skills involved in fine binding.

Little books

To see the image in more detail please click on the photograph.

I have always had a fascination with miniature books and have, over the years, collected a fair few. I thought that you might like to see some of them. The first one I ever bought was the miniature bible, which is not much bigger than a one pound coin. I could, at the time of purchase, actually read the text, sadly now I have to use my magnifying glass. The birthday book is Victorian and contains selected biblical scripts for each day, I bought it because I had illustrated "A Book of Days" and was intrigued by this early example.

A few years ago, I decided to learn bookbinding and book making so when I saw a miniature book making kit for sale, I had to have it! I ordered a kit from The Green Chair Press after falling in love with the Japanese paper and the origami nature of the book, which needs no glue, it is simply folded paper. I was rather taken aback by the seemingly impossible task of transforming the tiny pieces of paper into a little book but after a little perseverance I managed to finish making the little book at the top left of the photograph. After that I was hooked and decided to print one of my designs onto paper and make a slightly larger version, (top right).

The other little book is made from a piece of hand-marbled paper from yet another workshop, I shall save that story for another post. I think by now you will understand that I am something of a workshopaholic, sad but true.

Retail therapy

Kayla Coo, Karen and The Dutchess have all very kindly nominated me for various blog awards recently. I am afraid I have been very remiss at passing these awards on, to tell you the truth I find "the rules" hard to follow, it is difficult to choose favourites as there are so many great blogs to visit! So instead, I have decided to showcase some wonderful handmade items which have been made by extraordinarily gifted individuals. Each of these creatives has their own blog, if you are unfamiliar with their work you are in for a treat. If you click on the images you will be transported to their shops, but beware, you may stay longer than you think!

Again, I hope that I have not left anyone out. Karen Davis is an illustrator with her own blog called Moonlight and Hares. Morna's blog is called Bittersweet, she creates all kinds of things, using felted wools, she also makes fabulous dolls which I adore. Rima Staines makes individual clocks. she is also an expert printmaker, illustrator and book artist. PG at Middle of Nowhere  illustrates children's books and creates wonderful characters using needle felt. Kayla Coo "paints with thread" and sews lovely things with felt and last but not least Celia Hart/ Magic Cochin is an illustrator and print maker and has a blog called purple podded peas.

Bright eyes and berries

The illustration below is taken from my Hedgerow Collection. The pattern around the central dormouse square was inspired by fungi.

Ted and I are making the most of the late afternoon daylight hours before the clocks change, it's so much nicer to walk in the sunshine!

The hedgerows are full of berries, I love the way that each shiny berry reflects the light, making the hedges glow.

Throughout my working life I have had to learn to store away reference material, it is inevitable that a Christmas commission has to be completed in mid summer and visa versa. How much more inspiring it would be to be able to paint in sync with the seasons. Now I have my digital camera it is possible to take hundreds of images and if I make a mistake, I can easily delete the image. I don't have to worry about wasting film anymore, so thank you to the brains behind the technology!