A Flying Acorn for Louise Gardener's Cape of Creative Courage
When I saw that Embroidery Artist and Designer, Louise Gardiner was looking for volunteers to take part in her latest community art project I really felt the need to get involved. Her work is so beautiful and inspiring and I’d watched with amazement as previous projects had taken shape on Instagram - including Stitch a Cloud and the Cape of Empowerment and really admired the energy and determination that Lou had put into designing and creating such beautiful pieces and then sharing them as community projects.
Her latest project “Flying Acorns” and “Cape of Creative Courage’ project is for Marchmont House in the Scottish Borders. The initial call out was for people to create embroidered flying acorns with local groups of people getting together to stitch. These acorns would would be displayed in embroidery hoops hanging from the ceiling surrouning the “Cape of Creative Courage” which would be designed and stitched by Louise.
Image from Louise Gardiner’s blog
My grand vision for the exhibition of the cape! I envision the embroidered cape to be surrounded by all of your beautiful embroidered acorns. They will be exhibited at Marchmont House in a gorgeous gallery with skylights, the sunlight will stream through the stitched acorns.
The stitched acorns will be hung above the cape to imitate the look of a tree - hopefully an oak tree. Alongside the acorns I would like to exhibit a few of the letters that you will send with the acorn. I’ve written another blog post about the letter and what I’d like you to include…mentions of friendships, courage and creative power.
Louise Gardiner
I had already decided that I need to get involved with this project - there is something about embroidery and stitch that brings people together both physically and emotionally and I wanted to be part of something like this, even though I would be stitching on my own it’s the feeling of being part of a collective enterprise that is really appealing. This project has real poignancy beyond the sense of community and coming together once you learn that Louise Gardiner is battling cancer. It is incredible how she has shown such honesty, integrity, strength and sheer determination and the shares the really powerful belief in creativity and positivity being such powerful forces for good.
I had downloaded one of the flying acorn templates for the ones to be displayed in hoops en masse with the cape and had started rumaging through fabrics looking for something suitable to use, when I saw an Instagam post from Louise asking for hand and machine embroiderers to volunteer to stitch flying acorns to go on the cape itself. Knowing that she would be undergoing major surgery and a long recovery period followed by more treatment, she was looking for around 20 people to volunteer to help with the cape. I really wanted to put my name forward, and before I could convince myself that I wasn’t up to the task, I fired off a direct message offering my services.
I was really pleased to then receive a reply asking me to take part in the project and soon received my pack with my acorn template and a small selection of suggested fabrics to use.
I must admit to spending a lot of time thinking about which fabrics to use for my acorn and the design of the whole thing so that it reflected Louise’s design aesthetic but had a few elements of my work as well. I decided early on that I just had to use the funky orange and black/hint of animal print fabric that I received in my fabric pack. It’s so unlike anything I usually use. I also received a piece of magenta leatherette - a perfect partner for the orange and black fabric! So, that was the acorn sorted, not for the leaves. I had a good look at what I could see of Louise’s sketchbook ideas that she had been posting on Instagram to get a feel for what she was after for the overall look.
So, after finally deciding on my fabrics and design for the acorn and leaves I got to work preparing the layers, cutting out the shapes and painting the fabric.
As well as using machine embroidery, I wanted to add some additional embellishments as well. I had a root around in my bead drawers and found some tiny black ones and some lovely glass ones that I had forgotten I had. I handstitched the black ones to the acorn cup to and added the glass ones to the green oak leaf to add a 3-d quality and a bit of extra interest.
Acorn detail
Glass beads embellishment on one of the oak leaves
Here’s the finished piece before I posted it off to Louise Gardiner for the next part of the process. It’s been great sharing images of our acorns with the other artists taking part in the project as well. Embroidery and stitch are great ways to connect with other people and develop social interactions. Let’s hope Louise remains well enough to see the completion of this fantastic project.
