Snapdragon's garden

This week last year

You possibly remember last winter - this week last year we were well and truly snowed in, sledging orders out and missing out on all the fairs we had planned.

This weekend I stood behind my stand at the brilliantly successful Green Gallery Christmas Fair, looked out at the hills, and thought "well at least its a lot less stressful this year"

Ha.

On Monday I went to wake my daughters, didn't put the corridor light on, forgot that we had lifted the floor to investigate a leaking pipe and splat, fell down the hole, spraining my ankle and buising my foot.  I am reduced a not very stoic hobble, with a dark purple balloon like foot. Yesterday I had to get my sewing machine moved up to the house so I could wince in private.

Today we woke at 5 to cars and lorries driving along our single track road - taking it as a diversion as the main road was closed. 24 hours of torrential rain has flooded the area, Drymen bridge has collapsed, schools are closed . . .

Isobel was stranded in Croftamie and was persuaded to go home, Valerie had to abandon her car at Balfron Station and be collected by Donna in the super van, Kit took 3 hours to get in.  It all felt like a bit of a disaster.

And yet - with Katie (off school) printing off orders and trimming and everyone else working at breakneckspeed we managed to dispatch 114 orders before I sent everyone home at lunchtime.

We live up a hill - for burst rivers to reach us they would have to be at Ice Age levels - yet you go out of the cabin and all you can hear is the roar of water.

The Altquhir burn, which runs through the bottom of the garden, is a little trickly thing, thin water over pebbles.

Today is is carrying treetrunks - a full flowing river.

 

Goodness is that the time . . .

This year has been whizzing by - and it seems to be getting faster as we head towards the end.

I realised today that we are very near to the last order date for framed versions of our Art Prints if you want them for Christmas - the very last, non-negotiable, not-at-all-flexible order date for them is 1st December as I need time to get them framed properly.

There are 2 prints - a groovy alphabet one which is printed from my original vintage fabrics appliques

and looks wonderful both in adult or kids parts of a house.

and a Land Rover one - again printed from my embroideries

I am now very excited as I have worked out how to embroider new bespoke number-plates for the land rover

they are embroidered onto vintage linen and then heat sealed to the print - the photo shows one of these - in fact the printing of the background itself is so good that you can hardly tell the difference.

So if you know someone who would love to see their Land Rover immortalised - well you know where to go. www.snapdragongarden.co.uk

But please, please - if you want a framed one - let me know soon!

A find

This morning I was searching through the shelves of fabric looking for some old linen to make a poppy tea towel.  I pulled out a piece about 18 inches square and found this

It is obviously done from a transfer pattern - first the transfer has been put onto the linen and then individual elements have been put onto fabrics which were then cut out and glued to the linen back.

some pieces are then painted - though I am not sure whether they could have been supplied ready painted as a kind of kit.

I suspect that that may have been the case as a lot of the painting seems a bit more assured than the cutting out, particularly on the woman's face.

I'm also assuming that there should have been stitching along all the transfer lines.

Obviously I'm not the only one to pile up part finished projects in a drawer.

I'm not  sure who gave this to us - the linen was folded and looked plain from the outside.  It is a great treasure though - I shall have to think of what to do with it - for it deserves to be saved.

While I have been sewing . . . .

Euan has been decorating the bits of the house which were not part of our rebuilding - the parts of the house which had begun to look incredibly, nay embarrassingly, scruffy.

He started with the bathroom - until we extended the house this was the only bathroom and we had decorated it to some extent - we tiled it with some wonderful glass 1930s tiles that my parents took out of their bathroom in 1976.

along with a very nice bath, and an arts and crafts wooden cupboard, we wanted to keep the tiles but get rid of the saggy woodchip and general mouldiness.

So there was to be a vague deco theme and a grey/green colourway to go with the rest of the house. We had originally just thought of painting it but as soon as I saw the beautiful Whitby wallpaper by Mini Moderns I knew that it would look exactly right - grey, deco-ish, rhythmic boats, slightly sheeny . . .a truly beautiful design.

The room isn't quite finished - it still has mirrors and so on to go up - but I have moved in my beautiful driftwood sculpture by Kirsty Elson - it looks as though it was made to fit.

 

Drafting in help

On Saturday it switched from busy to unbelievable busy here.  These are the files of orders for mirrors and badges - wholesale and other things have their own files . . .

Yesterday I was forced to be realistic and stop taking any more wholesale orders for embroidered things and to draft in some emergency help to get orders out.

I was lucky that it was an in-service day and the schools were off, so my girls and Kelly were able to come in and package and pack.

So today we are only a day behind on orders - though they are still flooding in, thank you!!!!

And I am about to go and embroider some of these

our best seller today.

Thread changes

It's a cause of constant mirth in the workshop that I hate changing thread colour on my sewing machine.

If people want to wind me up they ask for 1 chicken lavender bag to be made - 4 changes of thread.  It's a form of psychiatric problem I think.

Today has been my favourite kind of morning - a stream of things needing to be made that are all red thread on cream

from mirror pouches first thing

and lots of our beautiful mulled spice scented bags

which will be off to the City Arts Centre in Edinburgh

mulled spice wool cushions destined for The Heart Gallery in Hebden Bridge

and red cushions for a variety of retail customers . . .

and not a single change of colour.

As I say its probably a defined psychological condition.

Influence

At the moment we are in phase 2 of decorating the house.  The point when we are beginning to tackle the original, rather grotty bits that are shamed by the brighter, prettily painted new bits.

I use "we" erroneously, as it is Euan who is doing all the decorating - while I retreat to the workshop and sew.  I did however choose the bathroom wallpaper - the beautiful Stone colourway of Mini Modern's Whitby wallpaper 

I love the wallpaper so much that I have been looking at getting a roll of their Festival wallpaper in grey and yellow to paper the inside of an old gun cupboard

All of this preamble is really just a way of showing what has been going on in my head - for yesterday, when given free range to do a mix of glasses cases in one off colourways I made this

primrose yellow on grey

a nightmare to photograph but very beautiful in the flesh.

And when I had finished I realised that the colourway was due to looking at the yellows and greys on the Mini Moderns site.

Whereas these ones

are equally obviously influenced by all the spiced cushions I have been sewing.

Anyway as a result I have decided for a short period of time to let people choose the colour of velvet and the colour of thread of their glasses cases - I'm looking forward to some interesting combinations.

 

Bright blue

It is a glorious day today - bright, brilliant blue.

I am in sewing really - but took time to be in the garden over lunch.

The best thing in the garden at the moment is the dogwood - its the first time I have left it to grow big enough to berry.

and it looks wonderful with the slightly dog-eared cerise asters.

and brings out the colour in the euphorbia stems further down the border.

After the soggy few days that we have it seems amazing that there is so much vibrancy amidst the grey

Though there is beauty there too.