Last week in the middle of our mini heatwave I had a day out to Withernsea Lighthouse with my friend Debbie to see the ‘From Withernsea With Love’ exhibition. It’s a collaboration between Karen Turner who is a talented textile artist and Dean Wilson, a local poet and lover of pebbles and other beachcombed items. Debbie has blogged about our trip here with much better photos and text, so I’ll just say that we had a fabulous day, the beachcombing was excellent, the fish and chips delicious and the exhibition was well worth the trip.
Karen’s stitching is exquisite. I’m lucky enough to own two of her completely hand stitched quilts and there was something familiar yet different about her pebbles quilt, featuring forty nine of Dean’s pebble finds.

Each pebble is surrounded by a ring of stitching like a halo and they are instantly recognisable from the photos and the stones themselves, displayed in the nearby cabinet.
She also embroidered exquisite copies of some of the pieces of sea washed pottery that Dean also found and they were displayed with the pottery in a glass fronted corner cabinet that made them almost impossible to photograph.

However, each piece was detailed in a sketchbook…

…which was as fascinating and beautiful as the pieces themselves.


After our climb up the 144 steps of the lighthouse, fish and chips and obligatory beachcomb, we retired to the shady lighthouse garden with a drink from the on site café and I did some stitching on a piece of felt I recovered from a felted vessel I made ages ago which I had never been happy with.
I ironed it flat and cut it into a curved shape before blanket stitching it with a very brightly coloured variegated thread which happily was toned down by the felt.

Then I finished off the woven spiders’ webs I’d planned to encrust it with.

Liking it much better now.
I believe the ‘From Withernsea With Love’ exhibition is on until early October but only at weekends now. Well worth a trip in the the wilds of Holderness, especially if you enjoy beachcombing and eating fish and chips on the beach!!