Behind The Hand Painted Design - Bluebell Woods
It's that time of year where carpets of blue and purple hues fill our native woodlands. Bluebell season, which usually begins towards the end of April into May, is one of the most magical natural spectacles. Ancient woodlands where native bluebells thrive especially captivate this whimsical feeling.
This year I have made it my mission to visit as many accessible local bluebell woodlands to inspire my designs. The paths at my local bluebell woodland have been cleared and made flat so that more wheelchair and pushchairs are able to get around, making my goal a lot easier. The best display of bluebells I found were in another location, Crickhowell (although it was a lot harder to get to accessibility-wise). We were so lucky to see a rare white bluebell, which is believed to occur 1 in every 10,000 bluebells.
British Wildflowers in Decline
The beautiful bluebell wildflower is loosing the woodland habitats due to the introduction of the Spanish bluebell. The stronger Spanish bluebell invades woodland as garden-escapees and are able to out-compete its native counterpart for space and sunlight.
You may have spotted that bluebells aren’t the only wildflower in my new design. Snake head fritillary illustrations interweave between the bluebells and orange tip butterflies within the pattern. It is not known whether it is truly native but can be traced back many centuries, making it a true British staple. Likewise to the bluebell, snake head fritillaries were once found in abundance in meadows and wooded areas, it has been pushed to endangered status due to habitat loss. As two beautiful flowers that need to be preserved, I just had to celebrate them in my latest textile and stationery collection.
Bluebell and Snakehead Fritillary: The Design Process
What connects the two flowers? Technically, it's very rare to see these two species side by side as their habitats differ. The inspiration to combine them came from the book 'The Concise British Flora in Colour' by W. Keble Martin - which can be seen in the featured photo of this blog post. This wonderful book features many different species on the same page, and the native bluebell and snake head fritillaries as seen in the photograph are next to each other on the page - I thought they looked great together - so decided to combine the two and so my 'bluebell woods' design was created!
My design process always starts with studying nature and hand painting the motifs which I scan and arrange (and re-arrange, sometimes multiple times!) until I can see the pattern that I feel looks natural and timeless.
I hope new design celebrates the delicate beauty of these flowers, and inspires awareness and conservation of the native bluebell so it can be enjoyed for hundreds of years to come.
The Collection
I can't think of more worthy flowers to celebrate in pattern design - I hope you love the new collection as much as I do.
Take a look at the new ‘bluebell woods’ textile and homeware products here
