WARMTH
Nature slows us down effortlessly, without lectures or training. Simply being in it, working with it, hands in the earth, watching clouds skudding by, leaves fluttering in a breeze is mesmerising, fluttering down in autumn to create a shaded Aladin’s rug, just waiting for us to fly on a creative adventure.
Yet rushing, life, we miss so much of this soul soothing beauty. A little inspiration for you.
City dwellers, there is also so much nature around, in parks, self-seeded weeds growing out of the walls at train stations, pushing through the tarmac, roadside trees, parks with lots of fallen leaves. When we start to notice we realise how many beautiful trees there are. The leaves used in this project are from my car park. Country dwellers – you have a feast of nature to choose from.
Collect a few leaves you love.
COLOUR
Do you at times struggle with finding the right colours to use in your creations, let nature help you. Match your threads to the colour of your leaves, or near enough. Warm, muted, fresh, contrasting, blending, uplifting. Don’t worry too much about it being perfect. Go with the flow.
CREATE
Leaves falling make a beautifully natural design, overlapping. Outline sashiko is perfect for this style of stitching, and you can keep going layering the colours over each other. This would also look fabulous in monochrome shades, and the browns spectrum. Use colours that feel good to you, we are all drawn to different colour palettes and this is about feeling good as you stitch. It really doesn’t matter what other people like, simply enjoy your creative moment.
projects
This technique can be used on garments, bags, pouches, baskets – it is super versatile and can be stitched onto completed work, a denim jacket or your old shopping tote. In the video we make a pinch pouch (full making details on the membership site).
MATERIALS
Use scraps of fabric that you have, again colours and textures that feel good to you. Thread used here is DMC 6 strand mouline cotton (shades shown in the video). Needle is a #2 crewel needle.
