Back in April, at the height of lockdown Terry thought he shouldn't be taking George
for two walks a day so I was taking him out in the afternoons - a youngish labrador needs his exercise. Half way along the road, before it turns into a country lane and fields, there is a front garden with a flowering cherry tree. By the end of April the tree was in full bloom and I wanted to try and capture it as a textile picture.
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I got the background fabrics sorted, with poetic licence to edit out the houses, and was pleased with the way the I did the 'blossom' with eyelash yarn and a very loose sort-of 'blanket stitch' made up as I went along. The rainbow is there because there was one chalked onto the pavement about 10m away from the tree.
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About a week later after some wet and windy weather the ground was covered in pink petals and the tree was back to its dark red foliage. I did a tiny bit of hand embroidery to the picture but I just didn't know how to finish it so I put it aside for four months.
Yesterday I looked at it again, and I could see that the stark emptiness of the background reflects the way I was feeling during lockdown. On some days I didn't see another person for the entire walk and when I did I felt that they were invading 'my' space. The picture with its emptiness
was complete and only needed to be backed and bound.
Through lockdown I sewed at least twenty sets of scrubs, through the FB group Medway Scrubbers. The first batch was with the preferred 80-20 poly cotton but after a few days all the online supplies of that had sold out and heavier 50-50 was used and then it went down to donated new or lightly used bed sheets and duvet covers. I used some left over sheet in a rather nasty shade of green for the backing, fused to the support with Bondaweb and the last scraps of the original 80-20 for the binding.
Not a particularly attractive picture but it is what it is; my memories of lockdown 2020.
13" x 16.5"
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ETA - the colours in the first two pictures are much better than the finished one, taken just now under artificial light.