A Summer of Mushrooms

The summer always makes me smile, especially as it normally when the rain arrives!  Spring rolls round, nice, mild and sunny then as soon as the summer solstice hits, bang, we get rain.   But boy, does it mean everything grows.

Even ideas, I have been enjoying drawing mushrooms recently and I thought wouldn’t it be great to turn these into prints for embroidery.  One thing has lead to another and, yup you guessed it, I have turned it into a reality….

Will you join me on a Summer of Mushrooms?

Ever since I was little I have always been interested and drawn to folk law, the whimsical nature of fairies, gnomes and dragons.  I think it’s that over world, escape from the reality into something magical that appeals the most.

As a kid I always had my head in a book and this has followed me throughout my life.  I loved the mystical stories where you could get whisked off in your imagination, stories like Eragon, The Northern lights and Terry Pratchett novels weaved through my adolescence!

Of late I have been on chic flick novels, easy reads I pick up when we visit the library.  In a time when I have limited capacity to read, something easy like this  to pick up appeals.  Realising I have been missing pushing my boundaries when it comes to reading I asked on Facebook what I should be reading now.  The answers appealed to me and the main draw was those kind of books I read when I was a kid!

It’s not surprising to me to realise that this interest from books has fed into my creative mind of late.  I started drawing mushrooms a couple of months ago. Joining the kids at the table while they were drawing.  We’d got a Mushroom guide out on the table and something in me started drawing them! Lots of them…

As the kids watched on in amazement, a little grin appeared in my mind.  Suddenly my mushrooms had doors, windows and chimneys a little fairy den of joy.  Here is the first picture I created:

A Mushy-room idea sparked

The dutiful thing was to post it on social media, I was really pleased with this drawing, such a long time since I had drawn like this.  The response was overwhelming, I hadn’t had such positive feedback from something like this before.  It sparked an idea, plus a love of continuing and drawing more in a dedicated mushroom book!

Being a stitcher and wanting to see how my drawings would turn out as an embroidery.  I picked one of my mushrooms to turn into a print.  Following a nature inspired idea, I printed some fabric with leaves and flowers to make base to embroider on.  When I say I, it was me and the kids one afternoon:

It was a pure pleasure to stitch and I enjoyed mixing up the colours.  I am really pleased with the results:

I can’t stop there…

Nope, I want to make more.  This meant turning more of my drawings into digital images.  The past week or so I have been busying myself with doing just that.  Here are just a handful of some of my drawings:

Mushy-rooms Embroidery Templates

Currently I have only managed to sew one of my mushrooms. My plan over the summer is to sew 8 more to make a 9 by 9 grid wall hanging. Not wanting to leave you behind though, I have turned my mushrooms into a downloadable print for you to use too! Fancy joining me in some Mushroom sewing this summer?

The stitches I have and will be using on my designs are a simple back stitch or running stitch, maybe a few french knots, nothing too taxing.

Each print is approximately 12cm high and the width varies depending on how wide the Mushy-room is. They fit nicely in a 4″ embroidery hoop, a nice tiny project on the go.

I’m feeling in a good mood about this project so I am giving away one of the Mushy-room prints for free, you can download it here. Have a go and see if you enjoy it. If you’d like to go big, or tiny, but big you can purchase the download for 10 different mushrooms:

A Summer of Mushrooms

Will you be joining me for A Summer of Mushrooms.  Make sure you a signed up to the community so you can keep up to date with my progress.  As the weeks go on I’ll share more of my finished prints!