Click Here to find snippets of inspiration from my journey.

When I began to explore the fields and roadsides for flowers to hammer in my studio, I recorded my impressions daily on Instagram.

This diary acts as personal memory and a work log.

It records a journey made every spring and summer for two years. 

29th April 2018

Primrose. Like squashed sunshine. Perfect to brighten the gloom that squats above us. 

24th April 2018

The forget-me-not, whose blue is a ghost. It slips away as soon as it is seen. I lift the hammer and hit. The fabric buckles for a moment, the fabric takes the colour, then fades into khaki. I ponder the flower's name as it disappears: forget-me-not.
2nd May

Copper beech leaves are resilient and sinuous. When they have been pounded they take on a different form and become a textile in their own right. I am fascinated by this transformation.
Ferns become papery after pounding but are tougher. I think I might stitch these in place among their shadows.

18th April 2018

When the sun shines so do I, quietly and brightly. 
I went for a solitary walk through the woods and around the field. I met no-one, only the wind that blew my loose chiffon into a billowed sail I steered by. 

I collected a bunch of sap-heavy leaves and by the time I reached my shed they had wilted. Dropping them over the fabric and pulverizing the juices until they bled into the weft was the work of twenty minutes. 

The imprints are beautiful.



18th April 2018

This is a brave plant, this borage. It has survived the winter (and it shouldn't.) The papery white flowers are clenched like a fist at the tips of thick spiny stems. When I pinch the petals away from the five tipped green star that holds them they are the sweetest tasting thing in my garden.
29th June

Today, the wind keeps blowing my flowers away. 


4th July

Just a little walk. Nothing too serious. Only sticks and leaves today. I am in danger of enjoying this odd foraging life too much.

16 Sept 2018

If there is one flower that has fixed my eye this summer, it is this ballerina of the borders; the demure yet outrageous fuchsia. Discovered in Haiti at the very end of the 17th century by botanist and monk Charles Plumier, the 110 types of fuchsia are pollinated by hummingbirds and carry small bead-like edible fruits.

23rd June, 2018

When the salt wind from the north sea dries out a bladder campion this is what you get: Veined grey-bleached tissue cups stripped of chlorophyl.

A brooding wind accompanied me in the shed today as I collected this palette of bruised shades.

17th June 2018

These are the mauves that grow in the meadow at Blickling. I was so captivated by how their dusky dirty shades coloured the breeze I had to collect each different piece of purple I could find.

3rd May 2018

Today I found this leaf lying in the sap green ground like a fallen fairy wing.

23rd June

Today’s walk began with a petrified dog fish and bird-stripped sun-blanched crab shells. Our feet took us from shingle and sea, through woodland and the purplest heath. I filled my hands with this lovely bunch of bits as we got a little bit lost and Wulfie wailed until he found a stick.

4th May 2018

So here is the most precious little ghost of the day. The colour is so vibrant and true.

Most of the flowers I have been carefully obliterating this week have disintegrated into a very fine filmy layer on the fabric that is is possible to gently peel away. Not so the grape hyacinth. It has collapsed in a far more chaotic and expressive way.

2nd May 2018

Copper beech leaves are resilient and sinuous. When they have been pounded they take on a different form and become a textile in their own right. I am fascinated by this transformation.

21st May 2018

I am so in love with these little garden ghosts.

23rd August, 2018

My summer is written in petals here. It is scribbled in flowers over fading fabrics and gathered in pending heaps on my desk. I can trace every step I have taken since April by the flora and fauna I have gathered and smashed.