Just For Sewing The Green Leaves Of Summer

I know, I know... in the film** they are singing about reaping and sowing. But when I read about Hillary Waters Fayle, and the amazing embroidery she does on green leaves, I couldn't help changing the spelling in my head. This talented artist lives in the USA and does wonderful stitchery on leaves. Check out her website here. And look at this fabulous work

"TO WORK WITH LOVE - I want to salvage and revive our connection to the natural world.  I study textile … traditions and processes, using them in collaboration with found botanical and organic material to symbolically bind nature and the human touch. These botanical embroideries …  are born of my desire to illuminate this connection and my curiosity about the overlapping of spiritual and religious symbology and sacred geometry, with patterns that exist in nature. Now more than ever, it feels important to inspire a shifted perspective on the way we view the natural world; to explore and appreciate what is so often overlooked and to realize the potential for existence in balance with nature.”  HWF

And then, in this country, is the equally talented, German born Susanna Bauer. She uses crochet rather than embroidery - adding delicate edgings and tracery, with a limited palette of colours. Her website is here

"COLLABORATING WITH NATURE -I work with found natural objects. Leaves, stones, pieces of wood…ephemeral things, easily overlooked. And I use crochet; sometimes as embellishment, but mostly in a more unconventional way as a means of sculpture and construction. There is a fine balance in my work between fragility and strength; literally, when it comes to pulling a fine thread through a brittle leaf or thin dry piece of wood, but also in a wider context - the tenderness and tension in human connections, the transient yet enduring beauty of nature that can be found in the smallest detail, vulnerability and resilience that could be transferred to nature as a whole or the stories of individual beings."SB

** for those of you who don't remember The Alamo, here is the beautiful song from that film.