Edith & I

I love Edith Holden's botanical work, it's stunning and I so wish that I could paint like she did. I recently purchased (from Trademe) a book about her life called " The Edwardian Lady", it was really interesting to read more about her life and to discover that we share the same birthday. Edith died tragically as she was gathering botanical samples to paint at Kew at the age of 48. Like many artists she found fame long after her death, in her case nearly 60 years later when her book was published "The country diary of a Edwardian lady".

I had a very tatty copy of that book almost every page had fallen out from it's binding and when I discovered a copy in much better condition at a local secondhand book sale it had sat quite forgotten on a shelf. It was hard to cut up the pages as I love the images so much, but as I do have another copy now it seemed a sensible thing to do. A friend is heading overseas and wants to take some of my stitched cards with her to give as gifts so I've made a bunch of Edith Holden ones for her to take. I also abandoned the sewing machine for some of them and hand sewed some of the images on for a very "rustic" look, I love how some of the images wrap around the card and the stitching shows through. I've bundled them up in groups, like birds and "bramble" ones and pretty wildflowers. I do have some spare that I'll hopefully pop in my etsy shop over the next few days.

After a very bad start to the week weather-wise, it even snowed (a teeny tiny bit) here in Auckland! It's a stunning day today, clear skies and lots of sun, I'm heading out into the garden to make the most of it. Happy weekend!