Lots of Blue and White

There's a lot of blue and white around at the moment, both in the sky and in the garden.

First of all, the whites:

clematis avalanche

dicentra spectabilis alba

exochorda

variegated white honesty 

white lilac

Next, the blues: lots and lots of forget-me-nots

forget-me-not

camassia

iris bud

It's not all blue and white though, the sky sometimes goes dark dark grey and the garden has splashes of other colours too.

cerinthe

Cerinthe self sows all over my front garden, and in the back there's more dicentra

dicentra spectabilis

 and the late flowering narcissus tresamble.

narcissus tresamble

But before I go, I must just share with you a tulip, now fully opened and all frayed and pretty -

Tulip Huis Ten Bosch

Bluebells and Buttons (or cuckoos and clocks!)

The bluebells are late this year but definitely worth waiting for.  Earlier this week I was working from home and needed to get out, clear my head, and get away from the computer screen for a while so I took myself off to our local bluebell wood, Arger Fen.  This was what greeted me - a sea of blue!

They are so dainty as they hang their heads.

I sat and wallowed in them, listening to chiffchaffs and my first cuckoo.  The video clip below has the cuckoo singing (although if you're reading this on an iPad you sadly won't be able to see it).

Today though I've been creating with buttons. Ever since I saw this button clock on pinterest I've wanted to make one.  Initially I planned to go and buy a rainbow assortment of buttons to make one like that one but I changed my mind, deciding that a: I'm not really a plastic button, rainbow type of girl, and b: I have hundreds of buttons here!

So after some sorting, some careful measuring and some sewing I made this more muted one.

I had some problems stopping the mechanism from pulling the fabric back which made the hands catch the buttons, but a bit of ribbon and some drawing pins did the trick!

I'm really pleased I opted for the more muted colours, using a mixture of old and new buttons, as it looks just perfect on my dining room mantlepiece.

(Although I have just realised that one of the buttons I've used is the spare one from the coat I bought last November so I'll just have to hope I don't lose one from it!)

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The temperature's dropped and the sun has generally stayed away but it did stop raining for a little while today so I rushed out into the garden to see what was flowering.

There are red tulips,

pink dicentra,

and, bizarrely, a peachy rose (Abraham Darby)!

There's white exochorda (The Bride),

white lilac,

and white 'blue' bells.

There's a white and blue iris (Knick Knack),

bluebells (proper blue ones!), 

and tiny blue forget-me-nots.

But my favourite has to be this wacky, black parrot tulip.

It's in a pot by my front door, and they've actually done very, very badly (only about 1/2 have flowered) but the few that have opened make me smile!

Let's hope it warms up again soon!

Lavender's Blue Dilly Dilly

Well not exactly lavender (yet), but many of the plants flowering in my garden today happen to be in various shades of blue.

(ajuga, camassia, forget-me-knots, geranium, viola "freckles", 

pulmonaria, bluebells, brunnera and veronica)

One bed in particular is predominantly blue, somehow it seems very calming.

But I haven't just been gardening, I've been some fiddling with textiles too.  I was inspired after reading Emma's blog "A Little Bit of Everything" to try incorporating some seed heads into textile work. I've used them as inspiration before but never actually tried using real ones within the piece.  I was limited in my choice as it's really the wrong time of year for seed head collection but I had some stipa gigantica and lavender hanging about in the conservatory.

Golden Light (18cm x 14cm)

For this one I used handmade paper as well as undyed scrim, gold organza, gold thread and beads stitched onto a background of natural osnaberg.

And for this one I dyed the some of the scrim and used some sheet music and lace aged with walnut ink, before stitching the lavender underneath some lilac organza and adding odd bits of thread and some beads.

Faded Memories (18cm x 14cm)

I'm pleased with how they've turned out, I like the "threadiness" of them and I like that they include plants that I grew.  Not sure what I'm going to do with them though, might have to cogitate that for a while, although I might hang them somewhere!  Thanks Emma for the inspiration.