Fungus Collection.

 A damp weekend spent in the bush is always exciting, as I never know just what fungus I will see and manage to photograph in the wet conditions. This rather scary purple one is actually very pretty with the pale blue/mauve gills underneath.

   This robust yellow variety seems a little more benign, although I still wouldn't want to eat it!

                                  More of the purple species showing the thick blue stalks.

  These orange ones have very slender stalks and look as if they are too thin to hold the caps up.

 These actually look almost good enough to eat, but turn them over and the gills are deathly white, not the pink-brown of the edible variety.

These look particularly poisonous I think, although I don't actually know if they are. The combination of sickly yellow with the green is definitely off-putting.

More Gardens from the Past.

 This little machine embroidery I called The Yellow Garden, for obvious reasons. Again another imaginary garden worked many years ago, and sold at an exhibition.

 This is a real blast from the past as it is all hand stitched, something that I rarely do these days. Called Wild Lupins, it was based on an image I saw in an old National Geographic magazine.  It was in this piece that I started to use thick threads in the front and fine machine stitching threads in the back to give the impression of the distance.  Again, this is one that I have kept, as it's a pivotal point in my journey in thread.

 This red door was at the side of an old church in France, I just loved the worn step and the mauve flowering plants clinging to the old stones. I have actually worked this image twice, as I loved it so much. Others must have liked it too, as both pieces sold.

Another very early hand stitched piece with a painted background on cotton. Spinifex Dreaming was the result of a trip to Central Australia and seeing the Spinifex plants growing for the first time.  They grow in a circle out from a central point that becomes bare red earth as the plant grows outwards.

Garden Embroideries from the Past.

 Having just recently enjoyed working the garden on and around the wall and gateway, it reminded me how much I have enjoyed sewing other garden scenes in the past. The one above was based on a lovely quiet corner in a large established garden, with huge pots dotted about, not all with anything growing in them.

 Another corner with pots, this time with plants growing in them, almost swamped by the nasturtiums and other flowers growing around the bases.

 This garden was purely imaginary, worked on a hand felted base, I just embroidered the flowers wherever the colours of the felt dictated.

 Another walled garden embroidered almost 20 years ago. Whilst all the other pieces in this post have sold, this one I have kept, as it was a breakthrough piece of art for me at the time that I made it. It was the first time that I had attempted to make a textural wall and the first time that I had embroidered vegetation on wash away fabric to be applied individually when washed and dried.

It Worked!

 Just a narrow strip to add to the side of the piece that was too small, but which of the many different green threads did I use in the original piece? By carefully matching I think that I've selected the colours correctly, good enough anyway, as the leaves are all different shades in nature anyway.

 Just by cutting around some of the leaves on the bigger piece and overlapping the smaller strip I have avoided a straight join line, and I think that it looks O.K. I also cut off one of the free standing flower stalks from the right hand side piece to add to the line up here, the left top looks a bit bare. Done!

Final Piece of the Jigsaw.

 This is the final piece of  the vegetation to go on the right hand side of the gateway. I've made it a bit larger than would seem necessary, as I'm sure that the left hand side piece is too small.

Here is the new piece of embroidery in place, and I'm wondering if the lower section in the shadow is too dark., but it might just have to stay that way! Yes, the left hand piece of the puzzle is too narrow, so I'll have to work another section to fill in the gap. Almost there.

That's Better.

Trying to save myself work, I had placed some old bits of embroidered foliage from another project below the new piece at the top of the panel. It never looked very good, so I made some new strips of vegetation which are better colours for a start and even though nothing is attached yet, it already looks a lot better. It may not be the final configuration however.

The Next Stage.

 Here is the next stage in the walled garden scene. Unfortunately I don't think that I was careful enough measuring the area that I worked on, a little wider would have been better, but I can always add some more leaves later if it still doesn't look quite right.

A Long Way to Go.

None of these pieces of embroidery are fixed in position yet, but this is more or less what I have in mind. The foreground comes next, which will be a bit of a challenge, as it will need to have bigger leaves and flowers to suggest that it's all closer to the viewer than the vegetation that is on the wall.