This and That

I'm thinking of the turquoise waters of one of my favourite beaches in the Highlands, prompted by finding this tiny sea urchin in my anorak pocket. I remember picking it up on Melon Udrigle beach on a freezing cold day last December. It's less than one inch across but the complexity in the surface pattern is immense.

The same beach is inspiring my challenge piece for the Trident group I belong to. The bag is to be the canvas for the artwork, and I intend to extend the grassy dunes onto the canvas with paint and stitch. There is a lot of work to go into this by the time we meet in just over a week's time.

The other side needs melding in some way to the blue linen (this would have been so much easier if I had not stitched the bag together first), and then I will add stitch. A lining and a handle will finish the piece off and I have a collection of driftwood and feathers to tuck in the pockets.

There was an interesting guest  at the Guild this week, Liz Holliday - Sewing with Sequins. We had an informative talk and made some sample pieces. The history of these much used embellishments is fascinating and set me thinking about making them out of various materials. They have been made from fish scales in the past... I was thinking of the intense scarlet of the lily beetle wings. I am on the lookout for these pests on a daily basis as they love my collection of Martagon lilies and can decimate them in a few days if I'm not vigilant. It would be nice to put them to good use - watch this space!