Driving down a tiny Cornish lane towards our cottage for the first time. Dog tired after 7 hours on the road but fizzing with excitement and anticipation for the week to come. Trees are encircling the lane: crowding overhead but never oppressive. Sections of dark velvety shade alternate with bright patches where sunlight streams through the leaves.
It was enchanting and I felt I had to somehow capture it as the first piece in my journal.
I started with watercolour on calico to mark out the road and the patches of light and shade and then used free cross stitch in variegated stranded Stef Francis silk to loosely cover the painted areas and add texture.
After consideration I decided to keep the darker green section in the middle and the road as plain painted fabric to give contrast to the layered and overlapping texture of the stitches.
The stitching was pretty straightforward but the words took longer.
Still doesn’t quite express what I wanted to say. Perhaps I’ll never quite manage to capture in words the way my heart soars when I travel down these lanes but I can still feel an echo of it when I look at this tiny scrap of embroidery.
Under A Topaz Sky 
Dear Alex, creative lady, you are amazing. This is the way of your expressions, this is the language of your creative soul. And I can read this, your designs, objects, materials and colours coming as a language in art. Thank you sharing with us, I loved your blue tones with this amazing lane… With my love, nia
You don’t need to capture it exactly, this will be a permanent reminder of how you felt.
Lovely work & I’ve so enjoyed your holiday journal growing daily! Love the stitched slate & wrapped wood & the eden project book,too! Congrats on the Etsy Shop opening! Looks fab.
The words are perfect! They capture the whole ambience of the shaded/sunny lane. We have many streets around here like that and I love it when the sun comes through the leaves to light my way. You’ve beautifully captured this moment in stitchery.
You may not feel you’ve expressed precisely what you wanted to, but I think you are close – it reminds me very much of some similar lanes I’ve seen!
beautiful stitching and if it evokes the memories then it is a definite success.
How do you do it all so well? I know a family of artists (painters) and I often wonder if it’s nature or nurture. I’m really interested in what you might think about that. Is the rest of your family so incredibly creative?
My dad and my aunt (his sister) are/were both what you’d consider ‘artistic’ but I grew up in an intensely practical family where art was considered a waste of time.
But it’s just inside me. I have to create and when I can’t, I really feel it so with me, it’s innate – nature.
On the other side, all three of my children are considered ‘artistic’ and are certainly very creative. My son dances, acts and composes; my oldest daughter acts, creates costumes for cosplay, writes very well and draws and my little one loves to create anything and at the moment wants to be an artist when she grows up. So there I guess it’s at least as much nurture as nature.
Fascinating question though!!
Thank you so much for your personal insight. I do find the subject quite fascinating!