The Poetry of Plants

Photograph of a Dahlia in the walled garden at Waterperry Gardens

I often like to create art inspired by flowers and foliage. Whenever I am out for a walk, it is always the plants that catch my eye. I often take photographs of foliage or flowers that have beautiful shapes or colours. Back in the studio I can work from these photos to create drawings and embroidery ideas. If I see some then I like to collect a few interesting seed heads or seed cases too, which I will bring home and add to my collection to draw at a later date.

Drawing from photographs in my sketchbook

I also draw blind contour sketches of plants on site, which I can use to inspire my embroidery designs. I find blind contour drawing to be a good, no pressure, kind of exercise to do whilst I am out and about. I try to concentrate on what I can see rather than what I am drawing. Often the lines and shapes that I create in this way have a wonderful freedom of movement about them which I love. They are a true reflection of a moment in time.

Leaves couched from an original blind contour drawing.

I am currently playing with different ways in which to turn these drawings and photographs into embroidery. I have tried re-creating my drawings using couched threads, which I really like because they do retain some of the movement of the original pencil drawings but I feel they are not enough on their own. They need something with more substance to contrast with them in a finished piece of work.

Dahlia stitched using long and short stitch filling with stem stitch outlines.

With this in mind, I have been experimenting with long and short stitch as a filling for petals, which again works well but I would like to experiment more with colour in this technique. I would like to try some more shading and colour mixing using the thread. I think there is the potential for some beautiful and striking results.