IMPORTANT! Typepad is shutting down and more...

I've just had a very worrying e-mail from Typepad - thats the group that has been publishing this blog, but they are going to shut down. I will do all that I can to keep my records and subscriptions from the past and I hope that I won't lose touch with any of you. But if you don't receive the blog in the future, you will know what's happened

But let's hope for the best, and that the blog will reappear together with all its long history!

It’s that time of year when all my time and energy are devoted to producing works for the upcoming autumn exhibitions, and of course I’m trying my best to come up with things that will have overall appeal. Brightness always goes down well - people are often drawn to eye-catching colours, so now is the time to get out all my most colourful threads.

This next design was inspired by a T-shirt that was recently worn by Audrey, a fellow artist who lives locally. The shirt was an attractive mass of printed flowers of all sorts of kinds and sizes, but it was all done in very muted and boring shades of grey, and I couldn’t help thinking that it would be much more interesting if it were just a bit brighter

Bright blooms for the show

Well, you can’t get much brighter than this! I think perhaps I got a little carried away, but at any rate this should probably get people’s attention!

But the problem with this kind of embroidery is that I begin to see things that should be changed, after it's all finished and it's too late. This one - well, maybe it needs some stems and perhaps leaves to join things together. Oh well, I have a few weeks left to make changes

As you may know, I do a lot of designs for the Secrets of Embroidery website, and recently I’ve been organising a new collection for them. Without meaning to be rude, I have to say that many machine embroiderers who buy designs prefer to use the simpler and more conventional kind of designs, so the things I do for my “Secrets” collection aren’t always very exciting. My recent efforts are distinctly floral, and not very original, but I found these designs interesting to do. They are all oriented on the diagonal, as I thought that might be useful to people finishing off the corners of cushions and quilts.

However while I was playing around with them, I found that if you just made 4 copies of a diagonal design, and then rotated the orientation of three of them, you could make a very interesting construction out of them. That’s probably not very clear, so here’s an example:

Here is a floral design, designed on the diagonal

And here is the same design, moved into a more complicated construction

This design is free on the Secrets site, but I’m also putting it up here: just click on this link:   Download Free diagonal v6  It’s just the single design - not the large 4-times one! It's for the 4x4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop and is in .pes v.6

Right - as I promised in my last message, it's time for another freebie.  I haven’t the least idea where the idea for this one came from, apart from the fact that peacocks are among the most spectacular birds you could imagine, and are endlessly inspirational

The summer peacock

There’s nothing special about this one - it’s for the 5 x 7 inch (130 x 150 mm) hoop, but it’s quite a large project - it took me an hour an a half to stitch out. But it has a “presence” which might make all the time worth it, if you can find a good home for it. Click on this link:  Download Peacockv6 to download it in .pes v.6

Well, that was certainly a busy couple of weeks! First, I had to prepare things for the craft fair and then set up the stall, and finally sit with it and chat with visitors. We didn’t have a lot of visitors - probably because of the unusual heatwave we’ve been having recently, which seems to have kept people in their nice shady houses. But I didn’t do too badly - in fact I sold a lot more things than I expected to, so I can’t really complain! Rather to my surprise, I sold not only a good number of cards, but also some of the larger pieces  that I’d just put on the wall to provide some colour

And I learned something interesting! If you follow this blog, you’ll know that I have a boring tendency to design things featuring lots and lots and LOTS of birds - and then of course flowers, as well as birds with flowers. I do so many of these that recently I’ve been trying to be more original and come up with designs of other, perhaps more “arty” things

But guess what most people seemed to prefer! Cards with birds and flowers! So that’s a lesson for me, and in the future I won’t be worried about too many birds

So here are a couple of pictures of the stall - not very elegant, I admit, but colourful and attention grabbing!

OK, it’s back to a more normal life now, and I’ll be back shortly with some more freebies