Disaster! My embroidery machine has broken down, and because it’s the holiday season and because we still have a snow problem here in the Highlands, it’s going to be a long time before I can get it down to Edinburgh to be fixed. So at the moment I’m spending all my time drawings and digitising, but because I can’t do any stitching there’s nothing new to show

So I thought I’d go through some old things I have in my files, and the first thing that came to mind was a series of leaves, suggested by Cherri and inspired by a visit to the Eden Project in Cornwall (http://www.edenproject.com/index.php).  If you’re not familiar with the Eden Project, it’s a spectacular series of huge domes filled with plants from all around the world, and there’s no better place to see a stunning variety of beautiful tropical leaves. I spent hours there filling up sketchbooks with drawings. The leaf shapes themselves are usually very simple but the detailing of leaf colours and veining can be dramatic. So the designs that were inspired by the leaves were also very simple in shape and concept

Some of the Eden project leaves as stitched by Cherri. The leaf shapes are very simple: it’s the choice of fabric that gives them character

 The only problem with these leaves is that they’re a bit indeterminate and vague in shape – they just sort of fizzle out at the stem ends. They desperately need organising into larger patterns, and that’s just what Cherri did with this brilliant cushion. She stitched the leaves on to a simple leaf print and added a few embroidered insects from another of my old collections, and the result is truly tropical in feeling

Tropical cushion by Cherri Kincaid, using the Eden Project leaves

I love the Christmas holidays and since childhood have made my own Christmas decorations. In the past I’ve played around with using embroidery to make tree decorations but I could never really solve some of the technical problems that presented themselves. However this year I‘ve been trying a new approach

The bird and star are straightforward appliquéed and embroidered designs, made with hand-painted fabric and stitched onto a normal medium-weight calico. I stitched one side of each design, then mirrored it and stitched that, and then glued the two halves together. I used “Paverpol” but you could use any kind of thick PVA glue. The advantage of this kind of glue is that it’s transparent when it dries (so spills don’t matter much) and it also makes the embroidered fabric hard and rigid. If you don’t have any PVA to hand you could probably use any kind of fabric glue, although you might have to sandwich a piece of cardboard between the two pieces to make them stiff enough to hang.  If there’s any white showing along the line where the pieces join, you can cover it up with a dab of paint. The bird’s wings are just made as a separate piece in the same way, and then slotted into place

You could add sequins or crystals or little gold or silver ornaments to these to make them sparkle, but unfortunately I don’t have any to hand (and we’re snowed in yet again so I can’t go out and get any). So this will have to do

To be honest, I’m not all that interested in making things out of embroideries. To me the most interesting thing by far is the quality of the embroidery as a design or even as a piece of art (if that’s not too pretentious).  Add to that the fact that I’m useless on a sewing machine and the result is that I don’t make many things out of my embroideries. But embroidery is after all a craft, and I realise that most people think of it as an embellishment for objects, so every now and then I try to think of useful things to do with it. Here are a couple of ways that people have used my designs in the past.

Jacobean motifs on a stole, embroidered by Carolyn (http://www.creativeneedlecraft.com/)

Little celtic bag – one of the few things that I’ve actually made myself

Art nouveau motifs make a shade for a bathroom window (by Cherri Kincaid)

Trunk show of my designs that Cherri put on at a local sewing shop