Roxalla

I'm away in Kidmore End this Easter to spend some time with Cecil as I'm never sure how many more Easters, birthdays, Christmases she may have; she will be 88 this year, which is quite a good age.

I have been reading another one of my grandmothers novels, this one called Roxalla, published in 1953, seven years before I made an appearance in the world. As with her other books, I can see family members in the characters she paints; in this one, her Aunt Annie makes an appearance. The youngest of my Great Grandmother Nanya's siblings, she was always known as "ah nah" to my mother, because of her habit of saying, with a gentle Irish lilt, "ah now". She appears in this story as Aunt Hattie, borrowing the name of her sister Harriet. She lived with Nanya until her death, and Cecil remembers her being a very expert smocker of children's clothes, work she did to earn a little money, as they were perpetually poor.

This story, like the others, is a gentle tale, set once more in Arklow, though she had not lived there for over thirty years. It is a place full of hidden and magical energy, somehow held in time, in her mind, permeated with the sense of mystery that she must have felt as a child. This was someone who was quite sure she had really seen a fairy, and the was an element of fey'ness in her and her older sister Connie. In this story, a young boy, Arthur, who lives in a small house set apart from the main body of the town, is befriended by the grandson of "the old lady" who lives in the grand house on the hill, and who is, we understand, grandmother to both boys; the one, William, raised in privilege; the other in poverty. This difference in upbringing is because Arthur's mother had been a servant in the big house, had married the youngest son despite the strong opposition of his mother, and was the left a widow when her husband died in a riding accident before the boy was born. The story is about the unequal friendship between the two boys, and about what happens when the eldest son of the family dies, leaving no heir. Because of this, it seems that young Arthur will inherit the house, a place that has filled his imagination for all of his life, although, until we join them in the story, he has never entered it, nor been acknowledged by the wealthy family. William is the son of "the old lady's" daughter, and so takes the last place in the line of succession.

As with all of her stories, it is as much about the impulses, motivations and inner worlds of the characters, as it is about the narrative. As with all of her stories, I enjoyed it a great deal, feeling that I had spent time with her, although she has been gone for many years; feeling also a wistful sadness that I can never say to her, "oh, I loved that one, the bit where you describe .... I know exactly what you mean, and is ......".

Tomorrow I will be able to share it with Cecil, and she will know who the characters are, and will tell me again about Aunt Annie and her smocking, and how she and Mum, when they stayed with their grandmother, all snuggled down together in her "great big feather bed" and other tales of their shared past, which are more immediate to her now than her day to day present. And she will pause and say "ah Kath, you've taken me right back to .... I can see that clearer now than I can see my home here", and I will know that it has given her pleasure, and brought me little snippets of those who are gone.

I have one left to read now, Glory Down, my favourite.

Look on the Fields and others

I'm sorry, it has been ages since I've written anything. In part this is because I ran into a "problem",which turned out to be me not noticing hat there was a size limit on Picasa albums .... Aha! so that's what that funny error message means when my photo uploads fail. You'd think I'd have twigged that, having at least some sort knowledge of computers and the like.

What else have I been doing? Dyeing cloth, planning City and Guilds , doing practical design exercises, stitching shadow work in between times and reading. Oh, and going to work! Some of my reading has been of Ganna's novels. These are the three I have read since my last post.

Look on the Fields was published in 1935, a year after Barney's Bend. Here is the cover, once more a lovely Rowland Hilder image.
It was, as I recall, the novel she felt had worked the least well, though for me it is a delight because it paints such a clear portrait of her family. At it's heart are three children living in Ireland, who welcome their cousin into the family. She is a fragile soul, who reminds me of Aunt Connie - Ganna's eldest sister, who was the most brittle boned of the three girls. In this story, her ankle is crushed in an accident - in reality, Connie's ankle was trodden on by a horse and was thereafter, twisted and weak. At the heart of the family are their mother, who watches the comings and goings of her household with patient amusement, and their their father, a gentle dreamy man who is the small town's dispensing chemist, as was my great grandfather in Arklow, where they grew up. She paints such a clear picture of this little seaside town, with it's groups of donkeys trotting down the high street at market time, and the ever present sea shushing at the shore... she touches on religion and on Ireland's struggle for independence; it was something she experienced fist hand as a young woman, and was part of the reason they left Ireland, the other being the death of her own gentle, dreamy father in 1914.

Grey Geese is also set in Ireland, near Arklow, but out on the plain beneath the blue brooding hills, that change with the weather. It concerns the way in which family hatred can twist a family for generations. It also has overtones of the political background, but is more concerned with the relationship between a young woman, widowed by the political struggle, her three children, and her father. He chimes with a previous character in Barney's Bend; both have a spiteful nature, that mocks all around it and manipulates others. She writes of the difficulties of poverty in a small 1930's Irish town, the standing forever to the back of the queue in the main shop, where each knows the others' business; waiting until all have been served, and the Widow has privacy to beg.

These were all written before the Second World War, in 1934/5/6 when my mother was a child. Then came the war, and a gap in both time and the progress of life. 

By 1952, when the next novel appears, Ganna had looked after, then lost her own mother, my mother was grown, England had been through hell and people had struggled on. Her later novels were written, and set, in England, where she had moved in 1921 as a newly engaged young woman. They center around similar people, but in a different world. For Flute and Piccolo was her last novel, published in 1955. I am saving the intervening two because one is my favourite, and because I realised that I'd not read this one.

This novel is set in a town that feels a little like Hastings, but Hastings of the 1950's where church bells still toll through the quiet of Sunday afternoons. We are moving in small town polite society, where all business is known and nothing interrupts weekend tennis at the club. Again, the story is of families, and how the various characters interact with each other. One, a rather dowdy woman is the long time wife of the eldest son of the family. Near the middle of the novel she experiences the latest of what are obviously a string of failed pregnancies; we see her hope and delight when she knows she is pregnant, and feel her numb despair as the pregnancy fails once more. I know that Mum, Ganna's only child, was herself conceived after multiple miscarriages, a phantom pregnancy and the stubborn resistance of my grandfather, who wanted no children. As I read this novel, I asked myself how much of her own experience flows in her description of this woman's, always seemly, suffering. The novel, which is in part about the coming of age of the two youngest family members, also portrays the very delicate and gentle relationship between the (once more widowed) mother of the family, and a man who was a childhood sweetheart, and is once more in her life. As with her other novels, the thing that is valued above all else, is kindness, the same kindness that was at the heart of my childhood.

Barney's Bend

Just now, for obvious reasons, lots of people are full of their plans for the New Year; new starts, old starts revisited, infinite ways to be better, more resolute - which is of course the etymological root of these resolutions. I've always found resolute rather hard - I can manage steady, stoic, enduring, dogged, but the minute I try to be resolute I find the inner nag who sits on my shoulder saying "Aha! we know where that leads don't we? You just can't manage it, you've tried before and you know you always fail" so my resolve shrivels and creeps away to some quiet corner, all hunched and woebegone, and my seasonal portion of self defeat takes up residence in its place.

So, this is not a resolution, but it is a hope. I'd like to read through all of my grandmother's novels, one by one, this year. To spend some time with them, with her, to see what she has to say. I have read them before, several times; they have been with me all my life, since they were written long before I was born. She wrote in part for pleasure, in part because she came from a literary and artistic family, but also to supplement my grandfather's income with enough extra to ensure that they could send Mum to a fee paying school. She was a very delicate child, breaking bones at the slightest knock or tumble, a trait she shared with her mother, her aunt and her grandfather, who bequeathed us some faulty genes. So Ganna wrote to ensure that her one beloved daughter could go to a school where there was less rough and tumble, less danger of damaging activities.

Her first novel was called Barney's Bend; that's its cover up there, with illustration by Rowland Hilder. Because I know our history, I know that it is set in Arklow, County Wicklow, which is where she grew up. Mum and I went there together some twenty years ago, so I recognise the geography. It is decidedly not a "modern" novel. There is no exciting action in exotic locations, no guns or knives or violently dismembered bodies graphically described, no sex, licit or illicit. I do read novels like those as well, so am not saying that with a moue of disapproval, but Ganna's novels are simple ones, about people and what makes them tick. Make no mistake, when I say simple, I don't mean simplistic or lightweight. She was a deep thinking woman, and one with profound beliefs, but her writing, in this novel, centres around a small Southern Irish town in the early part of the 20th Century, where cars and motorbikes were a rarity, where donkeys were traded at the monthly fair, where the evening light came from the sky or from fire, lamp or candlelight. Her characters are finely drawn, but their concerns are those of ordinary life, not of earth shattering events or heroic feats. She writes of daily incidents drawn with such, to my mind, exquisite observation, that their true meaning is shown.

Most of us live quiet lives, we don't holiday frequently in exotic places, indulge in passionate and sexually athletic affairs, or find ourselves caught up in intricate and convoluted events, involving foreign spies or slightly psychotic loners, with mystical powers of deduction. To be sure, novels like this can take us out of ourselves, they are perhaps the modern day equivalent of the myths and legends told by winter firelight in times past. But tales like that take us away from ourselves, to fantasise about what life would be like if only ... Barney's Bend is about a small group of farming folk, whose lives are intertwined, and about the consequences for one another of the things they do. It is about what matters in love and in life, about what is of value. The characters' thoughts are described, so we understand their motives and their actions. They do nothing earth shattering, and because of this, one is drawn into their world in a very genuine way; they are recognisably human, and their human failings are those we share. To my mind, and I do know I am biased, the novel encapsulates something very precious, the realisation that our lives are driven by what we think as much as by events; that because of this it is important to be true to ourselves, and those around us; important to be aware that we are responsible for what we do, we can bring good or bad into the world, each thought, each action has a definite and concrete value in reality. This makes it all sound rather preachy; believe me, I can't stand preachy. Her writing is so deft, so painterly in it's descriptions, so grounded in her understanding of motive and so evocative of human lives lived, that she reveals how this life, this here and now, is very real, and very precious. I love this book, just as I know I loved it when I last read it, and the time before. I am conscious that this is a gift given, to know her mind, and to understand her remembered wisdom, even though she is no longer with me.

Couching.

Which is a word rather like couchant, which comes from the French word for lying down, which has a particular meaning for me as it appears in one of Ganna's novels, spoken about the sight of a headland, rather like. Beachy Head. This headland is in Swanage, know there as Ballard Down, I have a tinted photograph just outside my bedroom door.

The novel is called Glory Down. I have read it several times, but so long ago now I can't remember the detail. I'm off for a couple of weeks over Christmas, and might read it then.

Working notes in Ganna's handwriting

But I digress. Couching. Using stitch to apply thread, or other, to a ground material, in this case the piece I've already used for the laid work.

I had been over in Eastbourne, and wandered into the little mall beside the station, looking for things to couch down. There's a little embroidery shop there, which always has something a bit out of the ordinary. I brought my treasures home, and, unpacking them, thought to look for what else I might have tucked in a drawer or two! I came up with these.

Then I thought to look further, what else might I couch down? A piece of fabric from a dyeing experiment, some fragments of Mum's dresses from. My scrap box, a vivid bit of turquoise, all repurposed fabrics, stitched to a charity shop find damask napkin which served as ground for the laid work.



Then I started stitching down the dyed fabric and did a little what if, which I am just starting to understand after following Jude's Blog for some years now? What if I bring the needle up and put it down within the profile of the strip of fabric?


A slight ripple in the fabric, which could be exaggerated but here is just held in with some turquoise fly stitches, their tails lengthened to accommodate the narrowness of the fabric.


I also discovered one has to have a full stop, or the fabric will flip up in an ungainly way!

Here some French knots and a little nine patch to echo the one in the centre hold everything in place, and stop the fabric from fraying any further. A little bit of fray brings out that lovely contrast between warp and weft.

Here, the same technique with the same thread gives me a flower garden, and allows a bit more of mum's dress to show behind the flower fabric.

I did my best to continue the colour theme from the central piece of stitching, it must have some common theme to pull it all together, colour seems a good start.

I also try to use an elbows length of thread, as advised by Barbara, more or less, depending on the thing I'm stitching, the change colour - so what follows can contrast entirely, so long as it works with the colour theme and with what's being stitched down.n

Preparations

Tomorrow, I'm going to my next workshop at Studio 11. Colourfun, once a month for the coming year. What pleasures to come!

The first session is resist dying, which was what I did for the mini quilt workshop, so I've been preparing.

pre-stitched/tied pieces waiting for tomorrow

I've done

cotton stitched in wavy lines, with points pulled up to make spiderswebs

the wavy lines all drawn up into exotic looking ruches

Silk wound round a plastic tube, then bound with, in the one case, fine cotton, in the other, rough thick twine. I'm interested in how the different binders affect the pattern; whether the texture of the twine will appear in the resist.

 More cotton, a strip this time, folded into triangles, concertina style, then stitched right through at the borders with, perhaps, the arms of a snowflake pattern. The stitching then drawn up on two sides, and on the snowflake arms, for texture. I'm hoping the stitches on the long edge will resist right through and leave a little ant trail at the folds end make the final arms of the snowflake. Alternatively, there'll be a jumble of textures, reading as nothing!

Then there's the old linen tea towel, probably Ganna's; folded, again concertina style, (linenfold) then folded again and wrapped, not too tight, with a rubber band

Lastly, some leaves, perhaps, or maybe little fish ...

stitched into the single layer of fabric, drawn up tight and tied off, with a little spin round the nubbin for added texture

 then I pleated (as best I could) the fabric across it's width, leaving the little nubbins sticking out. We'll see.

Where are the ideas coming from? From Janice Gunner's Shibori for Textile Artists. It is full of so many interesting things. You may remember the video I posted on Shibori a while back. It's the Japanese art of tying  binding, pleating and otherwise adding resists to cloth with thread, clamps and "stuff". Having absorbed plenty from Christine's last workshop, I really wanted to have some ready prepared cloth as well as doing some more folding and clamping tomorrow, with the other bits of cloth I've not shown you!

I wonder what pictures I'll be posting on Tuesday!

oh boy!

Harry and Connie

Have I been having fun today. I've been to be tutored by Christine Chester at Studio 11 in Eastbourne. I had the privilege, due to the sickness of the other course attendee, to have a one to one all day with Christine. I brought along some cotton; torn up sheets, (one of which had a woven label from Harvey Nichols), used past wear, so renewing themselves to a different purpose here. They once belonged to Connie,  my grandmother's older sister and Harry, her lifelong lesbian companion - but that's another story.

Christine was a delightful tutor and, whilst enlightening me on the marvels of tied, resist, clamped, twisted and crumpled dyeing, we found ourselves chatting about; family, studying history, playing music, adopting cats, living by the seaside and other enjoyable things.

The studio itself is really lovely, with windows on two sides, an open airy atmosphere, plenty of big trestle tables to work on and a space for being messy by the sink - not to mention a rather delicious pink tin containing bicuits!

I thoroughly enjoyed tearing my sheets into smaller pieces of differing proportions, then wrapping up a variety of things; rectangular blocks of acetate, ice lolly sticks, kebab sticks, acetate circles and donuts - clamped over folded fabric, rubber bands holding pleats and pinches of fabric and, on one small piece of silk, brought for a particular reason, a combination of folding, tying, clamping and sticks!

I was shown how to mix up the dyes, add salt, immerse the fabrics and, later, add mordant to fix the dye. She also talked to me about design, balance, using colour and texture, proportion and repetition, contrast and the placing of lights mediums and darks to achieve an interesting harmony of shapes on the final piece. Then, whilst the fabric was taking up the colour, I sat down with squared paper to design, trying to bear in mind what bits of fabric I'd dyed with which technique and how much of each! I've come home with the plan and finished making out a cutting list. I've run my bits of fabric through a hot wash, and I've found myself with these.

My favourites are

some moons

a flower filled garden

a sort of forest floor feeling

and this rather nice

Mandala

Tomorrow I have the fun of going back again to think about how to put bits of these together to match my design - or rather to work with design and these bits of fabric to create something, hopefully, beautiful. With any luck my fellow student will be feeling better so there'll be twice the fun.

I am genuinely stunned at the wonderful patterns and colours that have resulted from all of this. Not because I think I'm particularly clever, but because such simple techniques well taught, can produce such riches.

Can't wait

the Return of the Petersfield Fairy

I found this the other day, going through one of Mum's old photo albums looking for that velvet bridesmaid's dress of previous post

I can still remember the feel of that dress; it would slip from my shoulder as I flew about the green, gauzy train riding the air behind me, so sure that if I just believed hard enough, and ran fast enough, I could find myself in fairyland.
Very 1960's ....... I thought you might enjoy it!

Autumn beginning to happen

I mentioned this little piece quite a long time ago now here. It has been sitting in the study waiting patiently  for me while I was busy with other things. I took it up again last week and played about with it, pinning and repinning, photographing each redesign so I could have a think about how it was to go together. Eventually I printed little versions of each photograph in Black and White - OK sort of sepia really, but monochrome, so I could see the design and the balance of tones without the distractions of colour.

I thought I'd decided on the version below as a format, but once I'd started pinning and then tacking the bits onto the ground cloth, I realised that I preferred to leave the right hand edge of blue in one line, rather than staggered as it is here. It feels more secure, better enclosed, protective; protection seems to be a feeling developing with this piece....
Gosh, hark at me, talking as though I were some kind of expert - I promise, I'm not!

So, I've got the most part of it tacked down now, ready for the "proper" stitching - no that's not the work in progress above, I'll take another picture when it's a bit further along, but I have managed to get that odd little swing from left to right in the background sorted out now. I have a vague idea abut how I want to do this, but only very vague, I'm quite happy to let it become as the stitching takes it. I watch Jude's magic blog and see how she allows her cloths to tell her their story as she stitches them. I also try to keep up with a wonderful variety of others, who also follow her path. I know I can't manage the same, but will see where this one takes me. The gentle pink of the background was once a bridesmaid's dress, a vibrant magenta velvet with swansdown at the neck, sleeves and hem. I tried a little bit of the waste fabric (found in a box, having been hoarded by Mum over the years) in one of my earlier dyeing experiments. A lot of the colour leached out in the pot, but I rather like its soft, muted hue now. I have to say, I did adore the dress. Mum made it for me, and I really felt like a princess for the day

little groups of silent people

Wednesday Feb 6, 1952

This morning our king passed away. When I heard the news I couldn’t believe it, although he had been ill, he was so much better. Also the manner in which I heard it was hardly convincing. One of our workmen put his head through the window [of the office] and said to Mr Eldridge who was with me “the old king’s dead”. He didn’t look put out in the least. Oh how horrible everyone is becoming or is it just provincial? As mummy said, 50 years ago a man in his position would have taken his hat off and said “His Majesty has died”, or words to that effect. Muriel said quite openly that it didn’t affect her personally in the least. Janet and I felt the same, though [deeply saddened], and when I listened over the wireless & heard what was going on in London – little groups of silent people at Buckingham Palace standing outside in the drizzle and shopkeepers taking all coloured things out of the window etc, I knew that we were not in the minority. It has been so sudden and such a shock and there is poor little Princess Elizabeth rushing back from her tour of Australia – only 25 years old – and Queen of England. I suppose she has never had much freedom but she will have precious little left now or for the rest of her life. I think the Royal Family are wonderful - so courageous and brave and always smiling whatever their private feelings. I have only seen the Queen (now queen mother) in the flesh and I thought she was perfectly lovely and such a sweet and serene expression on her face and now poor dear she must go on alone and in the background. What a blessing that Princess Elizabeth had her marriage and found someone so nice and to her liking while her father was alive and could give her away etc, and also that her first baby was a boy and so made the succession to the throne right. When I think she is only my age, even if she has been trained for the job, I think she is  wonderful – so poised and so pretty too. I suppose we shall have all new stamps and money now. She is so small and yet she is now first in the land. I think she will make a lovely Queen even as her father was such a good and kind King. It seems almost unnatural to think that this time yesterday the King was alive and the Princess and the Duke were in Kenya enjoying themselves on their little holiday at the start of their long tour & everyone about their normal business and in 24 hours the princess now Queen is rushing  back to England & the whole country is in mourning.

An extract from Mum's journal. It seemed fitting today, when London, despite the pouring rain, is pouring it's heart out to Queen and occasion. I had hoped that her account of the coronation would be there as well; she saw it on a black and white TV in Battle Memorial Hall and it was the first time she went out properly with my Dad. Sadly. later in 1952 Mum's dearly loved dog Randy died aged only seven. She had longed for a puppy for years, and was given Randy as a birthday gift when she was 18. Here she is walking Randy, five years before the above entry.

Mum and her beloved Randy in the park 1947

There are no further entries after that in her journal

something for Her Majesty

Our regional challenge - note how I just casually drop in the "our", when in reality I'm such a new girl! Anyway, the regional challenge for the local Guild is to produce a piece of wearable art for the Queen's Jubilee. We, that is the members, are creating a series of  sort of "slips"; separate bits of embroidery, on a street party theme, to be carefully stitched to a dress that is being loaned to us for the project. In the past slips were on canvas, usually on a horticultural theme and made to be applied to hangings. We'll display our contribution, along with those of the other groups in the south east, and will be judged on the grand regional jamboree day out.You'll remember last year's was my somewhat whimsical Beezeyeview which does at least mean I've been a member for nearly a year, since that was for last year's challenge. I have been tasked with producing an ice cream dish with three scoops, some wafers and a cherry on top! The design has been provided along with clear instructions on how to proceed.

I've hunted down some fabrics in the right colours, and made a start with the dish. I did a couple of trials on some spare fabric - very useful as they helped me understand how the stitching would react with the fabric and allowed me to adapt the way I was going to work..

Talking of being helped to understand - my advice - please take it - don't include your finger in the piece you're stitching on the sewing machine, it's very unhelpful!

Anyway, inspired by the glitzy piece I did for Brodie, I thought a little celebratory sparkle might be in order since this is for a Jubilee celebration, so I've very carefully done a bit of reverse applique. First I got the fabric all pinned down, marked and tacked so I knew where I was going.

Then I stitched round the lines, first with straight stitch to stabilise the fabric, then with zig zag satin stitch to create an edge to cut against. Then I cut away the green fabric from the front, inside the diamond stitching.

Then I needed something to back the organza and bring our its glamour, a bit of a scrap I found while rummaging in Hastings Old Town recently - the best place to rummage I have to say. I stumbled upon a delightful shop, run by a delightful lady, with all sorts of scraps and bits of lovely fabric. She asked me what I was going to do, when I got home, with the little hoard I was clutching to my chest. "Probably take it out and stroke it" was my reply! I'll have to go back and tell her that a little bit became part of a Jubilee embroidery.

Anyway, where was I? Yes, I tacked this to the back of the piece, turned it over and stitched round the diamonds again and voila! A diamond cut green glass sundae dish ..... if you squint carefully!

I think I'll go round the outline with buttonhole stitch - I can almost recall Ganna teaching me how to do it - very useful for cutwork table runners, tray cloths, napkins and "dressing table doilies" ! It will allow me to cut the pieces out, so they can be assembled and fixed in pace with vilene on the back.

I'm also going to add some more embroidery to the stem and base, with perhaps a bit more of that exciting turquoise that reminds me of peacocks feathers.

Then there's the blobs of ice cream to do! Oh, and the wafers, and the cherries which I am going to try and do with free machine embroidery over soluble film to see if I can achieve something like a stitched badge, with perhaps a couple of silver beads of dew on the surface, and scattered across the ice cream. I'll use a scrap of salvaged silk to fill the in betweens. Hope I get it finished in time - it is jolly good fun doing something to a brief.

As I work, I sit at Mum's little kneehole desk, which she bought in her just post war youth. It used to house her typewriter, the source of countless letters to friends and loved ones; letters full of good humour, little rhymes, concern for and interest in all the various people around her. The ratatat tat of her fingers as they flew over the keys were the backdrop to my childhood. She bought it with wages earned shorthand typing in a dingy London Office, all the while longing to study music and play her beloved piano.

Amazing what you can find

when you open a cupboard - I seem to recall having two at one stage, one with wiggly edges that you could create even more bizarre squiggly shapes with! Once carefully preserved in Mum's wardrobe, now tucked away in my study - a "Grandmother's Gift"

thanks Mum x

and some stitching

I'm still stitching away on the City and Guild projects, each a little exercise in a group of stitches.  The latest piece is taking it's time, and mine, in between visits to York and the Quilt Museum, which was delightful as always.

This was the source - from one of our splash and splosh days at Barbara's

And this the work in progress. The colours aren't quite as disparate, but one was taken by lamplight and one by daylight. Fabric, a zingy recycled shirt found in the Lakes in a charity shop.

The idea in this one is to use composite stitches like raised chain band, guilloche, pekinese, amongst others and interpret the splishes and sploshes in the collage. It is slow but fun, and should be followed by three exercises in counted thread work, - canvas, cross and blackwork.

However I need to get the inspiration and the preparatory stitchings together for my final piece, which is based on this lovely pot that you can find here

She's a goddess of creatures, mistress of the animals, and dates from about 680 BC, called Potnia Theron. From this I got to this, with apologies for the poor reproduction of the drawn image

Again, a bit of splish and splosh as we were encouraged to explore our image, hence the collage, which could translate in to an interesting applique at some stage. The gold of the fabric, which will be quieter in the final piece, is one of the hankies I dyed here.  It seems fitting that a  little goddess cloth should have one of Mum's myriad of hankies as its base - with a  muslin backing to give it some substance. In the hemmed edge of the hankie there is a little row of three birds who will be her animal representatives. I want to use toning, quiet colours that fit with the original image, which is black on terracotta. I have to get this "idea" in by next weekend, which means this week as I have to go up country to visit my Aunt Cecil next weekend and get her settled down for Christmas.