Teasels soaking ready to make into a dye

Scans of hydrangea petal skeletons collected from the garden earlier in the year

The first tree in my embroidery based on drawings of Viburnum flowerbuds

July comes to a close, and my sheet of daily drawings for the month is completed. I chose wax pastels as I haven’t used them very much before. With hindsight, this was a bit of a chunky medium to use for such a small scale… but this made me simplify my style and concentrate on bold shapes. Some worked better than others, but I am pleased with how coherent they look as a collection of drawings - I think it helps filling each square instea of leaving white space around the drawing. Next month - rubber stamps (back in my comfort zone).

Teasels I’ve grown from seed last year have turned into giants at the bottom of the garden (some around 3m tall!) They looked rather splendid and statuesques for a short period of time, but then after heavy rain and winds most of them have collapsed. So, in the spirit of ‘waste not want not’, I chopped up some of the flower heads from the fallen plants. An initial soak in hot water has already yielded an interesting bluey-green colour, so I have high hopes for the dye and ink that can be made from these casualties.

I finally got around to scanning some hydrangea petal skeletons I collected from the garden back in early spring. I was fascinated to see how much they looked like trees (or coral as suggested on Instagram). I’ve printed these out onto acetate and hope to use them to make a cyanotype when the sunshine makes a return visit. On the same them of ‘things that aren’t trees but look like they are’ I started my embroidery based upon drawings of Viburnum flowerheads I made last month. The linen is dyed with Hypericum and the thread is dyed with Sloes (+ iron oxide) - both from the garden. This is unusually neat stitching for me - I realised that wearing two pairs of specs allowed me to see detail much better!