Explain Yourself!

I have spent much time looking through old designs, re-charting and adding some new ones lately. I am enjoying myself very much and, among other flowery things, came across some pansies I designed quite a while ago. I was more than a little surprised by how many shades of thread I had used. How could I have done this? Why on earth did it need that many? There were 44 shades in one circular design for a seven inch frame! I worked out why and will tell you a story, which some of you may have heard before: —

Many years ago there was a little girl, aged five, who went to an outstanding school called Fairfield PNEU School, Backwell, near Bristol. Everything about this school was wonderful. For a start you were treated as a proper person and with respect, not as a silly child. We were taught all the usual subjects very well and thoroughly. In addition there was ‘Picture Study’. Each term we had a famous artist’s works in a special book and once a week looked at one picture in detail. I remember Rembrandt, Millet (not Millais) and Giotto in particular. We were learning to look. We did this from the age of five and then throughout the time at the school.

The little girl aged five

One day the teacher gave us a sheet of good paper, set landscape, with six two-inch circles drawn on it. We had red, yellow and blue paint already mixed up and the first three circles were to be painted in these colours. I did this carefully. Next we were to mix colours two at a time and paint what we found in the other three circles. Red and yellow, blue and yellow, blue and red. I got orange, green and purple! This was the best day of my life so far – and I have never forgotten the joy and excitement I felt.

The year went on and we did lots more painting (we were not allowed to use the word lots, by the way) and after a summer of watching butterflies in the garden, we were back to school and, to my horror, the seven times table! This was the low point of every week for at least a term.

But every week, on a Wednesday afternoon, we went for a nature walk in the woodlands and fields near the school. North Somerset has plenty of rain, so the trees grew thick trunks and were very tall. I learnt the names of many wildflowers and how to tell which trees different leaves came from. I remember the joy of skeleton leaves too. Each time we had to bring back an item of interest and, for the last half hour of the day, sit and paint a picture of whatever we had brought back using watercolours and a brush only – no pencil first. We were told that Nature did not have outlines and this is, of course, generally true!

A whole year later – aged six.

One day I brought back a clover flower. I got its shape and that of its leaves in place and then looked again. There were darker shades in there and lighter ones too. I knew how to mix colours – of course I did! Every colour I saw I mixed and added to the picture. I knew it was going well and got quite excited. There were browns in there and some gunge too. At the end of the half hour I did, it seemed, have a clover flower in front of me. The teacher (lovely Miss French)  was pleased and I was told later that all the staff had been so impressed that my picture had been sent off to ‘Headquarters’, which was somewhere in the Lake District I think. This was the second best day of my life.

And so it is that, years later, I was, and am still, painting pictures of flowers, but this time interpreting them as cross stitches. I cannot help the numbers of colours that have to go in. They are what I see and so they must be there!

It is why this picture has 44 shades. Sorry. There are others with even more…

Incidentally, in this year when I was six I had learnt to spell the word ‘people’ but thought the English speaking (and spelling) nations were quite mad and were all spelling it wrong. I was going to spell it ‘pepole’. This made much more sense! Also, I decided that the word ‘little’ looked much prettier and became a palindrome (I did not know this word then) if it was spelt ‘littil’, so this was how I was going to do it. The English nations were going to be grateful to me for improving their silly mistakes! They weren’t and I had to conform. I am still a littil bitter…

The design is now up on Etsy, as is the Height of Summer and a few other ones. I am adding to the site all the time and have some treats coming along that will be finishing items at half price.

Keep looking at the  Shop here

More soon I hope and best wishes to you all.

Mary

–  I used to be Mary Demuth when I was the little girl.