Do you or don't you send valentines?
I do....but it has to be Homemade.
......except for last year.
Having just been commissioned for the
Homemade book, I was tempted on
Etsy.com to buy this delicious
Rob Ryan print for my sweetheart of 25 years, an investment me thinks.
Over the years I have received many beautiful Valentines from my true love.
Strawberry jam toast lovingly cut to spell I love you; Poems hand written and painted onto old postcards but my all time favourite has to be the one that
Elspeth wrote about in her
Wonderful Weekend book.
A polaroid photograph of a heart, with his shoes on one side and mine on the other.
So romantic, expressing more than any words, walking the same road, each a half of the whole.
Simple ideas are the best. I love this heart shape that I found fossilized onto a rock while walking in Dorset.
Buttons or shells threaded onto fuse wire then shaped to form a heart.
Or this wooden heart with a crackle paint effect.
Paper cutouts, not quite Rob Ryan but still beautiful when lovingly crafted.
I have knitted and sewn and I have baked heart shaped cakes,
all for my valentine.
My latest labour of love is adapted from The Homemade book.
A take on the traditional victorian sand cushion.
The making ethic has now naturally passed to my teen treasure, albeit in the manner of creating a photograph.
.
Already a bit of an old hand and teaching her Mother new tricks, this was last year's model, I love the "my funny Valentine" music on the piano.
I wonder what she will produce this year.
In October I will be leading a week long residential workshop titled
Re-Inventing Vintage French Textiles at the spectacular Chateau Dumas in South West France.
Inspired by Homemade, (which now has an American publication date November 2010)
I have adapted ideas and created lots of new projects mostly using the Chatelaine's wonderful collection of vintage French fabrics, lace, labels and buttons.
There will also be a trip to a local market, visits to brocantes and a day spent in a wooded glade in the grounds dyeing fabric using the traditional method of woad dyeing
If you are interested in the course or indeed any of the courses run at Chateau Dumas, email
enquiries@chateaudumas.net or visit the website.
Meanwhile......
A few strange things happened while I was there which made me think that my wonderful friend Elspeth Thompson was with me in spirit.
On my first evening I noticed 2 old copies of Interiors magazine in the library. I picked one up at random, (July 2008) and it fell open on the page showing a feature on Elspeth's railway carriage home.
Then later that day while wandering around the chateau I saw a vintage book 'The Week-end Book' published by Nonesuch press in 1928 ,a forerunner to Elspeth's own book 'The wonderful weekend book'.
How I wish I could ask her if she knew about this book or if it was the inspiration.
Adieu....
