In the past day I've been lucky enough to get a lot of new subscribers (thanks, Spanky, and welcome to you all!) However there seems to be some confusion about how you get the free design. If you want this month's free design, you just post a comment to the blog asking for the design. Just click the 'comment' button at the bottom of the blog entry, and when the comment box comes up say that you'd like the design. Then when I read your comment I'll send you the design.

It's important to realise that the design isn't sent automatically to all subscribers – you have to ask for it. After all, I don't suppose that everyone will want every design!

OK, here’s a suitably spring-like design for March. It’s part of a large series of horticultural studies that I did some time ago, taken from the work of Basil Besler, who was a 16th century German artist, and who produced wonderful paintings of plants and flowers. The design is for the 5×7 hoop, and has 22,774 stitches. I haven’t stitched it out for several years but it should be OK. If you’d like this design file, just drop a comment to the blog asking for it, and I’ll send it out to you. If this is the first time you’ve asked for a design, there are a few conditions set out on the “Free Designs” page on the navigation bar above

 

Basil Besler's tulip

This is the beginning of what I hope will be a growing list of links to websites and blogs that I enjoy. To be honest, at the moment I don’t follow a lot of embroidery or sewing blogs, mostly because there aren’t many who are concerned with the kind of work that I do.

However one that I do always look at is Cherri’s blog, at http://thecherritree.blogspot.co.uk. Cherri and I often work together on designs for her quilts, and in her blog she reports progress on her many projects

Another quilt blog that often comes up with good and original ideas is http://fastfridayquilts.blogspot.co.uk

 

But though there aren’t many embroidery or needlework blogs that interest me, there are a lot of art blogs out there that I drop in on occasionally. For example, there’s http://gollybard.blogspot.co.uk who has a nice feeling for birds and animals, and whose style is not unlike mine

Naive art isn’t to everybody’s taste, but it has a lot to offer anyone interested in design, and often has ideas directly applicable to textile art. One interesting naive artist is http://www.vanessa-cooper.co.uk/index.html

There’s also http://www.daphnestephenson.co.uk/index.html, another naive artist, but with quite a different style

And there’s http://www.ritchiecollins.com, a Scottish painter – and painter of Scottish subjects – whose style is deceptively naive. There’s actually quite a lot of sophistication in his work, and much of it would be beautifully suited to expression in textiles

Another well-known Scottish artist is Victoria Crowe. I like her work a lot, and again her ideas could so easily be expressed in textiles: http://www.victoriacrowe.com/index.html

If I ever run out of things to look at or think about, there is a never-ending stream of inspiration and new ideas in the stunning, eclectic selection at http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.co.uk I don’t like everything that he posts, but there are some wonderful things (listed in the archives) that I’ve never seen anywhere else

And of course I have to mention my mother’s website, maintained now by Gordon, her good friend and agent, at http://www.margohoff.com

OK, that will have to do for the moment. I will keep this section up to date as I discover new and inspiring blogs and websites

Both my parents were well-known artists in Chicago (U.S.A.) and I was born and brought up in a heady atmosphere of painting and general creativity. As a child I spent all my time drawing, painting and playing about with many different creative activities. Then, as an adolescent, I rebelled (as adolescents do) and determined to become a scientist. So I spent my working life unravelling the puzzles of genetics and embryology, and in later days, of stem cells. But I still carried a sketchbook with me and never stopped drawing the various things around me.

For many years now my husband and I have lived in Scotland, and most recently in the Grampian Highlands in Aberdeenshire, where the local history, landscape and wildlife provide a never-ending source of inspiration. By the time I reached retirement age, with no more structured laboratory work to occupy my time sketching and drawing began to take over again. And when I discovered the potential of the embroidery machine this part of my life really began to take off.

Why is the embroidery accidental? Several years ago, the industry that my husband works in was going through one of its periodic depressions, so he investigated several businesses which he might start up on his own. At a trade fair he became intrigued by computerised embroidery machines, and for a while contemplated setting up an embroidery business. But by that time the industry that had originally employed him had started to grow again, so he went back to his old job and I was left with the embroidery machine. So it was just an accident of fate that I became involved with these machines and with designing for them.

Over time I started to exhibit my work, and to my surprise it has proved quite popular. I exhibit at the annual North East Scotland Open Studios event and I’ve started to sell at local galleries as well. This blog is where I document what I’m doing at the moment – some of it successful, some of it less so. But it’s a valuable exercise for me to look at old work and to see how it develops and improves. It’s also good to make contact with other embroiderers, who are interested in using their machines in new and original ways.

Well – can you hear that huge sigh of relief? My amazing computer-wizard husband has finally got my computer and my digitising software up and running again. I won’t bore you with all the problems we’ve had but I would just like to say VERY many thanks to our dealer, David Drummond in Edinburgh, and also to a very helpful man in the Brother software department, for all their efforts on my behalf So – life should soon be back to normal (touch wood).

I’m weeks behind with all my work, but the first thing I need to do is get February’s free design up and running. So here is a Jacobean-style Tree of Life, with a little deer at the bottom. It’s a big design – 5 x 7 inches (130 x 180 mm) and about 28,500 stitches. If you would like me to send it to you (.pes format only, I’m afraid) just drop a comment to the blog asking for it and I’ll get it out to you

 

A Jacobean Tree of Life

 

If you do stitch it, please don’t pay too much attention to the colour suggestions I make in the instruction sheet. These old Jacobean designs were traditionally stitched in in a range of different colours, probably depending on what the needlewoman had available in her basket at the time, so you can be very creative and adventurous in your colour selections and it will probably turn out fine

Incidentally, I’d like to thank those people who’ve signed up to receive notification of updates to this blog. There are a lot more of you than I expected! If you’ve signed up but aren’t informed, please let me know and I’ll try to do something about it

My apologies to anyone who's waiting to see what February's free design is – I'm afraid that I still have computer and software problems, which means that I can't access my designs and can't organise a free design for this month. As soon as things get back to normal, though, I'll have something new up

The good news is that I've finally enabled the subscription facility for the blog, so if you sign in on the box to the right of the page, you should be sent an e-mail when I post something new

Well, it’s been a funny couple of weeks. The main problem is that in early January my PC died, and as I have all my digitising and graphics software on it, that rather slowed me down. The computer has been with the repairman for some time now, and we only got it back yesterday. I don’t even know yet whether it’s going to work or if I’ll have to buy a new one. So for the moment there’s nothing new to post, as I haven’t been able to do anything new, or even to access all the designs I have on file. For the time being, then, here are a few birds which I’ve posted before, but these are new and exciting versions put together by Cherri Kincaid. I would never have thought to stitch them in these colours, but I think that it all works brilliantly

 

 

Cherri's birds in new dress

I’m just posting three birds, but if you’d like to see the complete set of 8, have a look at Cherri’s blog:

http://thecherritree.blogspot.co.uk

While I’ve been forced to take a break from designing, I’ve been looking at ways of improving the layout of this blog, and with luck a new-look blog should appear in a few weeks