Nymans at Easter

We visited Nymans garden at the weekend with friends, to soak up some Spring ambience and join in with their Easter trail for the smalls. There's something so lovely about this time of year, even though it's often freezing cold even in the sunshine and you have to pack both a woolly hat and a sunhat in case the weather changes mid-walk. 

Spring flowers are exceptional. Perhaps it's the flower-less-ness of the Winter time that makes these few months so special. After leafy months of the darker evergreens or soggy browns clinging to gnarly branches, walking into a garden covered in pink and white Magnolia flowers the size of dinner plates, or knee high beds of nodding yellow Daffodils, scented Hyacinths and star-like Hellebores is a sigh of relief and a sign of warmer days to come. 

There is some exceptional planting at Nymans, and it is perhaps easier to enjoy in the summer months as a lot of the garden was roped off to allow the grass to grow and work to be carried out without all of us messing up the nice pathways and churning the lawn to mud, but I still like it in April. 

A lot of the Magnolia trees are either starting to turn now, or got a touch wind/frost bitten as there were some crispy brown sections to most of the flowers. Spring flowers are brave, but not always that hardy with an unexpected heavy frost or snowfall. 

My little Easter bunny, mid nibble on a veggie stick by the looks of things! He liked his ears, but was terrible at spotting the items on our Easter hunt - I ended up doing most of the work! Hopefully next year he will be running around and joining in more with the various activities but this year he was just happy to accept his prize of a chocolate egg (not that he needs any, we have a year's supply at least!). 

This bush was glorious, whatever it is. Does anyone know? It was absolutely brimming with teeny white flowers!

A lot of the old house burnt down in 1947 and because of rationing and the restriction of building materials at the time, the family couldn't rebuild it so the rooms that remained were made safe for the family to live in when they came to visit the garden and the rest stayed a romantic ruin. The family who lived here, the Messels, are linked to the British Royal family. The last family member to live at Nymans was Anne, Countess of Rosse and her son was the Earl of Snowdon who married Princess Margaret in 1960. You can see Christmas cards from Queen Elizabeth II on the side in one of the rooms and Anne did actually come back to permanently live at Nymans in 1979. I wonder if it was odd to live in a half ruined house?

It's a lovely building to walk through, there isn't really much left when you consider the size of the ruins but it gives you a sense of what it would have been like, and there is often a volunteer playing a grand piano as you walk in. We were lucky that a chap was tickling the ivories on our visit because Fin loved watching him play and we even had some dancing from our little friends. 

There are various sections of garden you can walk through, like little rooms of scent and colour. There's a big walled garden with vegetables, an orchard, a rose garden, fountains and several dramatic beds which really come into their own in the summer. At the moment there are lots of Camellias throwing their heavy pink flowers at you as you walk past, or vivid Azaleas bursting with colour as well as many other flowers I don't know the name of. 

If you are in the area, this is a beautiful place to wander round and enjoy!

Butterfly House ATCs

I am really pleased with these cards. The colours are bright and bold - perhaps slightly more vivid than a traditional butterfly house but quite evocative of the sorts of colours you might find in those polytunnels in the flowers and ornaments and the butterfly's wings perhaps. I could have gone very green for the background like the foliage, but where's the fun in that?

If you are a regular reader of my blog you'll know that I was working on these butterfly cards in stages and I've already posted about them a couple of times, once when I was working on the butterflies themselves (here) and once when I was working on the backgrounds (here), so this is the final finished look!

The majority of the stitching work has gone into the leaves. I've used the patches in the batik fabric and sort of tried to split the leaf in half with one half covering the lighter patches with a satin stitch for a raised padded effect, and the other half drawing around each spot with whipped back stitch for a solid line. I've also used slightly different colours for each half and left the original blanket stitching I used to attach the leaf in the first place so that it kind of peeps out between the stitches above. 

The top layer has no stitching at all, apart from the odd sequin flower which I'll come back to, and the layer beneath that is a lovely Kaffe Fassett fabric which has a huge pattern repeat and consequently has made the cards quite different from each other. Although these strips were all cut from the same square of fabric (which you can see in the backgrounds post), two have ended up with more of a pink combo and two an orange one so I've had to change my colours of thread to match. All I have done here is picked out the strongest colours and worked around them in back stitch using a single strand. Not every colour has been stitched around as I was just adding a little splash of extra detailing. I've also changed the thread colour for the edging on these pairs, using pink for french knots in two of them and orange on the others. 

It wasn't intentional to have them so different, but actually has worked out really nicely as I had initially made two butterflies in yellow and blue and two in pink and purple so I've matched them to the backgrounds. A lovely coincidence!

The slightly mottled blue layer below again doesn't really have any stitching on, mainly because the leaves cover most of it. I have edged it with randomly spaced vertical straight stitches just keeping that edge covered and secure, and also providing a little hint of stems and branches to the overall picture. 

Finally, the bottom piece, a gorgeous batik fabric, has been simply treated with some rows of running stitch. I've sort of followed the edge of the fabric and also the edge of the leaf where applicable but there wasn't a plan here, I've just followed my needle really and stopped adding rows where it looked enough. The edging is made with bullion knots in the same deep blue colour (using two strands). 

Contrast colours have been added with these delightful flower sequins that I picked up at the Ardingly Quilt Show this year. They are almost a pearly matte finish in a lovely range of colours that all kind of work with the fabrics here. They aren't flat either so add a nice texture that mirror the shape of the butterfly wings. I've attached them with little light yellow stitches between each petal and through the centre, then come back through them all with a slightly darker yellow to create a tiny french knot to hide those stitches and make the centres look neater. 

The butterflies are only held on by the long stitches that make up the body so the wings are free. I used three strands of a dark grey floss to shape the body, with the initial stitches going down through the small piece of calico bridging those sides together, then covering it with a vague body shape. Antennae have been added with stem stitch which works beautifully in a slightly curved line. 

I am mega chuffed with these and I'm so looking forward to seeing them all together as part of a collection with the other pieces from the Stitchscape Swap members. 

Oh and I almost forgot, the stress of stitching into a magazine page I think was worth it for the view underneath these wings! I'm really pleased with how it looks if you were to flutter the wings and catch a glimpse underneath. The technique could do with some work, and I would probably have benefited from adding a stabiliser to the calico sandwich to help reduce fraying but, overall, I think it was a success. 

March Morning Chorus ATCs

The mornings are gradually getting nicer and the birds singing more happily as the light grows and the weather turns for the better. From our bedroom window we can usually hear a Blackbird or two, lots of Sparrows cheeping and Jackdaws clacking, the odd Seagull and maybe a distant Robin during our morning chorus (if we're awake to hear it!). Having moved next to a fairly busy road, with a carpark out of the back I do miss the quiet mornings where you can lie in bed and just hear the birds but sadly we don't usually even have the windows open because of all of the black grit that comes up from the road below. On the other side of the house I can have my kitchen and sitting room windows open though, which is probably the better way round for the situation, and we've got a couple of bird feeders out there on our balcony/fire escape, which I am still trying to turn into an urban paradise with bug friendly herbs and other colourful plants to make the carpark view less grey. 

Anyway, I digress, thinking about the theme. These are the beautiful Morning Chorus cards that have been sent in by the wonderful Stitchscape Swappers. I wonder what they were all thinking as they made these cards, and what their inspiration was - especially the more unusual designs like the one from Veronica which features the first few bars of the Welsh National Anthem. 

There are lots of birds featured, Robin, Blackbird, Seagull (love the idea of a prettily chirping gull), Norwich Canary, bird silhouettes, stylised birds... I'm sure they'd all sound lovely if they formed a band together - they certainly look very attractive together as a collection. 

I'm sure I say this every month, so apologies for repeating myself, but I'm always amazed at the variety of styles we get through. The only requirements of these cards are size, relatable to theme, must contain fabric and stitching and be postable as a normal letter (no thicker than 0.5cm) - but that's it so there's a lot of scope there for experimentation with machine stitching, different styles of embroidery, cross stitch, fabric collage, painting, felting.... or fabulous combinations of them all! I'm never disappointed in a card that comes through the letterbox, and will often learn something new. It is honestly such a highlight of the month to be able to see them all together and, after an initial peek when they arrive, I try not to look at them until they are all in so that I can appreciate them all over again.

I really hope that those who take part are also enjoying both the creative process, and receiving a different card a month through their own door. Sometimes they might find the themes a challenge and others might speak to them more but that's part of the fun!

There's so much texture in these cards, I've photographed little sections of them right up close so that you can have a look too so do keep scrolling!! Click on the images to bring them up larger and zoom in if you need to. 

As always, these have been popped on to the dedicated ATC page on my website under their own little collection so you can see each one individually. Previous months are available on there, the themes and inspiration for upcoming months, and all of the cards that were made last year are also on that page. If you would like to join in, you can jump in at any time! Just pop me an email at sales@dottytextiles.com