'Hellebores', an applique textile wall hanging

Helena is better. Hurrah!! I drove her to work and she has survived her first day back of the term. After dropping her off I went shopping at an out of town supermarket and then drove on up the hill to Whiteshill to visit John W, who has returned from his business trip to Germany. I was so glad to hear that all went well and that his invention was well received and now lets hope that they will buy it up!

After swapping tales of both our recent escapades with work, we went to sit out in the garden of their 18th century Cotswold house set on the side of the Painswick valley and drank coffee sitting in the warm sunshine. John is an undoubted expert on lenses and mostly in relation to microscopes, but he knows a lot about photography. So I enquired about tele extenders and types of extension mounts. He even drew me diagrams of what is happening to the light in each situation and it really made a lot of sense.

Before I left I followed up his wife Liz's invitation to go into her wonderful workshop in the garden which she had built and fitted out last year so that she could practice her textile miracles in her own domain. She has just finished a particular piece which she has been creating for at least a year and it was hanging on the wall. She will be showing it at a gallery at called 'Select Trail 2014', the local exhibition in May organised by Stroud International Textile and Craft festival. Their online brochure is very interesting.

She calls this work 'Hellebores' and has written about working on it on her blog on her website. She showed me all the detail in the stitching work, explained the layers of the intricate collage, the materials, the techniques and photos of the various stages of its creation. I thought it looked beautiful especially in the light of the workshop next to various sketches of new work that she is starting for a Laurie Lee related exhibition this summer at Slad, in the adjacent valley.

I have added a couple of pictures of the whole piece to this Flickr gallery, but I wanted to show its close up detail here. She is so clever.