Seasons and beautiful things .... inspiration for my designs and stitching!

We cannot stop the Winter or the Summer from coming.  We can not stop the Spring or the Fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the universe that we cannot refuse, but we can choose what we will contribute to life when each arrives.

Gary Zukav

It is July already I can hardly believe it.  The Summer has not, thus far, been as great as last years but still we are managing to eat outside most evening and watch the sunset from out garden disappear over the sea in the distance.

I have been making the most of the Summer and gathering beautiful flowers to press and to also photograph up close for embroidery
purposes... checking the colours against threads that I have and against the new threads from the Shaker hand dyed ones that I have ordered to pick up later this year in America.  I am gathering all sorts of things so that even in the depths of Winter I can stitch beautiful Summer scenes.

I love to put things together to see how they might look or to get inspiration from them as I happily snap away on my camera and catalogue them for future designs and uses.

Vintage mother of pearl carved buttons, china, rosebuds and lavender, lace, ribbon and thread all give me ideas.  When I see a beautiful shade of ribbon or the curves and detail of lace ideas sometimes pop into my head and I can easily design a whole picture from the tiniest piece of lace or flower!

When I go to America I like to collect a few Fall leaves with all their colour and beauty and bring them home to document and keep and these are brought out for inspiration and to colour

match as well.  Now we do have beautiful Autumns here in England and in our forests and lanes the colours change as the earth has its last burst before sleeping until Spring, but I have to say that America has it in New Hampshire and New England when it comes to colours, I have never in my life before seen so many shades of brown, green, orange, reds and yellows in my life... it is breath taking and the way that everywhere is decorated with pumpkins, leaves and wreaths is so beautiful.  So when I go, I snap away happily on my camera to capture things that will inspire me later on.

At the moment I am happily stitching away with flowers and summer type pictures but soon enough I will be working on Autumnal and Christmas type projects...  But I do not want to think about that just yet a while and enjoy my stitching in the Garden with all

the wild life busy at their day!

I have some designing work to complete as well and I am keen to find some time to sew up a few of my log cabin blocks for my vintage quilt project.....  Having so much to do is happily keeping me occupied. Time is ticking away so must now get on with my stitching and designing. I hope you have a wonderful day today and enjoy this glorious weather this week that we are having.


Happy Stitching!