This week’s inspiration image was taken last year at Old Sarum, while walking around the hill fort surrounding the castle. It’s one of my favourite flowers; a harebell.
They remind me of Sunday walks with my Gran and family at Win Green. They’re beautiful, and very delicate looking flowers, although they are really quite tough, preferring dry and poor soils, open meadows, sandy dunes, and other exposed places to grow. They are known as the Scottish bluebell in Scotland, although there is no relation to bluebells. The harebell is also know as witches thimble, old man thimble and fairy bells, alluding to its magical associations. I had a hard time deciding what to do with this image. I had so many ideas, and so little time. I’m writing my next book, starting to put a selection of self guided workshops together, and getting ready for my first textile art fair, at Whitchurch in June. In the end time became the deciding factor so I needle felted a tiny harebell flower with some of my hand dyed merino top, and stitched a line of beads on the inside, for the stamen. The green stem became a necklace and I used the same linen thread to stitch sepals around the top of the bell. A Dorset button fastening worked well, especially as I had a button I made last year, in an almost harebell blue. The last bit of linen was just enough to work some stitches on top of the button, so it matched the sepals on the flower.
I’m quite chuffed with how it turned out, although I’m itching to try some of my other ideas for this image too, when I’ve time.
Next week’s image is below.
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