This year my Embroiderers Guild are doing travelling sketchbooks again, it’ll be the third time I’ve done it I think, I find it really pushes me creative-wise as I have to think up my own design. January was spent starting a new book, as I was sending last years book round again (on the theme of Christmas) I didn’t have to do anything. Our February meeting was the first swop of books.

I had to do an embroidery on the theme of globes and spheres, only I remembered the theme as including circles, so I later had to work out how my idea of circles could fit into the right theme!

Someone on facebook had been stitching some beautiful inchies,very pretty and delicate. I thought I could make four inchies, each on the theme of circles, but with a big circle running through them.

I found some silk noile which has a nice texture to it, I cut four squares and then used a simple running stitch to attach each one to a backing of calico to give a bit of support. I drew a circle with a silver gel pen to give me just a faint outline before again using a running stitch of silver lame thread to form the circle.

My original plan was to just stitch different types of circles, this was the point at which I realised it was meant to be globes and spheres, so I had to think quickly how my ideas could still be interpreted as that!! Hoar frost….

…I remembered the morning earlier this year when we had a very heavy hoar frost, I’ve never seen it quite like it was, the iris leaves had a line of dew drops (spheres!!) along each thin leaf, roses had a drop on every serated edge of their leaves, the old allium heads were like silver tracery balls, every blade of grass was coated in tiny silver beads…

So the silver circle became an iris leaf with beads along it, I cut a hole and blanket-stitched round with a sparkly bead on every stitch, just like the leaves…

I stitched another square with different types of circles, such as couched, woven, sequins, these are like the little mounds of moss we have on the walls – they look like mini hedgehogs in the frost!

For another inchie I used the silver thread again, just one thread, to make fly-stitches in a circle like an allium head…

For the final inchie I thought of all the stars in the night sky which appear on such cold nights…

The stitchbook collective proved very useful for this one, I drew a lot of ideas from the texture pieces we stitched at the beginning. Considering what was going on in my life at the time, I was pretty pleased with this one. I think I just about got away with spheres and globes – the lady whose book it is seemed very happy anyway! We managed to swop books again just before the lockdown, so now I’ve to think of something on the theme of King Arthur and the Round Table!