The Secret Garden

This collage got made while I was reading “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, what a wonderful book! I tried to capture the enchanting story, the magic of nature and of place, using fabric, paint, paper, transferred images and stitching. The atmosphere is calm due to the muted colours, but at the same time it’s buzzing with life, adventure, and possibilities. 

The piece grew organically during the reading process, which I love. I think I will try this with other favourite books; it’s an intriguing way to make!

Some details : 

A sun flower

Just a sun, or a flower, or a sunflower. No story behind it this time, just trying to make something nice. I used fabric scraps, all in the same colour tone, sewn in the centre. The petals are made from felt and fabric on which I made prints of leaves. 

Prints of (real) leaves:

Collages with prints

These collages are inspired by the work of Monique Day-Wilde and one of her workshops which I attended.

They are collages of paper and textiles with added stitching. Using paint I applied prints of plants to the paper. I used tissue paper and handmade Japanese paper, which is so lovely to work with!

I noticed again how joyful it is to stitch through paper! 

More of not stitching on fabric

I loved last week’s workshop so much that I went on stitching on all kinds of different things, like paper and orange peel and I also made some collages.

Here I used a chestnut leaf, after I made a print of the leaf on a piece of cloth. I sewed the leaf to the cloth and added some more stitching :

This is a fun collage of paper, stitching, paint, different leaves, dried physalis husks, a poppy seed pod and a piece of an old shirt. I’ll use the button holes to attatch the piece to a branch : that way I will be able to hang it on the wall.

I did some stitching on part of an envelope:

And here is the most fun one, stitching on dried orange peel : “We all have lots of crazy layers”! Well, don’t we? (Hanging from a thread, it spins nicely 😊)

Family history in paint and stitch

This is a bit of a story… During the pandemic, I took to walking through the village my parents grew up in. I wanted to look for my roots a bit. My mother’s parents started a garage after WW2. That garage is long gone but I remember many Sundays playing there as a child. Walking through that street I discovered to my delight that, because the neighbouring building was demolished and there is now a footpath, the side wall of the original workshop still exists. I was so happy to be able to see and photograph the brick walls my grandparents built there.

A workshop by Haf Weighton was the ideal occasion to do something with this experience. So with paint and stitching I pictured the wall in the present, adding some elements from the past through old photographs (I printed the images onto fabric). With stitching I tried to bring these elements together into a whole, using the texture of the fabric as a reference when choosing stitches. I did not use many colours, because I wanted to retain the atmosphere of old black and white photos. Oh and the young lady on the scooter is my mum!

This is the brick wall: