‘More matter for a May morning’

(From Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare)

An appropriate title as I have been totally immersed in Shakespeare for these past 10 weeks studying ‘Shakespeare and his world’ with Future Learn. https://www.futurelearn.com/ This was a thoroughly enjoyable course topped off by a visit to the cinema to watch the live streaming of King Lear from the Olivier Theatre – my favourite play having studied it for A Level many moons ago!

The beginning of May is a busy time in our house as we have 4 family birthdays in the space of 1 week, so not a great deal of stitching done. Mostly I’ve been playing around with scraps of procion dyed fabrics and machine embroidered motifs such as this dragonfly:

Machine embroidered dragonfly over strips of procion dyed fabrics on calico backing

The background fabric is calico, one of my favourite fabrics to work with, small scraps of dyed fabrics, mainly silks, have been stitched down then the machine embroidery done over the top. I may have gone a bit mad with the scrolled lines and maybe need to keep the antenna straight, otherwise I quite like the contrast of the black stitching.

I decided these would be nice made up as zipped pouches, I do like my sewing to be useful! These are the couple I made up:

Zipped calico pouch with machine embroidered flower over strips of procion dyed fabrics

Zipped calico pouch – dragonfly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a few other drawings to try out as I think this style has potential, what do you think? I would value your feedback.