A 30th birthday present for my daughter, and scroll down for my Gallery piece.

 Eight placemats with matching coasters, depicting scenes and places in our green and pleasant land.

English seaside beach huts

The White Horse of Uffington

Our local Oaks Park

Here, I have printed the fabric with leaf and feather prints from our local Oaks Park, and then added free machined woodland birds and a butterfly.

                         

My two year old grandson loves the moon, and is always looking out for it. I decided to make his own place mat, with some animals silhouetted against a full harvest moon.

An English country cottage.

Stonehenge.

The White Cliffs of Dover.

                         

What a year 2012 has been for Britain. The Queens Diamond Jubilee, followed by the 2012 London Olympics! A very special year to be also celebrating a 30th birthday, so I felt that I had to make one of  the placemats in recognition of these special events.

Six of the coasters above, and two below to match the placemats. The 'Team GB' coaster was made by cutting up a tea towel I bought in my local supermarket. My daughter isn't too keen on spiders, so I was a little bit naughty, and decided to stitch a tiny money spider hanging on a web in each coaster! Can you spot them?

I thoroughly enjoyed making these eight placemats for my daughter, it was what she asked for, and she wanted them to remind her of home as she now lives with her partner Ian, and two year old son in New Zealand, a very long way from us all.

And finally, this last photo is of a piece that I finished recently, called 'Reflected Sunlight'. It has been framed, and is now for sale in The Corner Gallery, near where I live. It's the largest framed piece I've made, and I must say I'm really pleased with it. It was inspired by the rippling sunlight reflected through a large polythene sheet in my nephews barn.

It's time for 'The Blues'.

It's time for the Blues! JQ's for the last four months of 2012 are shades of blue. I was inspired by a photo that I took of a rusted window frame in a derelict building in Dungeness. Self dyed fabrics, pieced and free motion quilted.

This is called 'The Boardwalk across the Road from the Beach'. The scraps of cotton stitched onto the rusted cotton were stained with beach pebbles and seaweed from the beach at Goodwick, Pembrokeshire, and from blackberries and seeds by The Boardwalk Nature Reserve, across the road. Unfortunately the stains don't really show in this photo.I've used stitch to contour the different areas of the beach, sea and boardwalk from my 'birds eye view' memory.

This piece is called 'Oasis'. As I stitched, it reminded me of the desert with sand dunes, and a couple of small watering holes, surrounded by some greener growth.

This is a small piece of silk, embroidered with simple stitches to convey the seashore from a sketch I had made a couple of years ago while sitting by the sea at Ferring. I had been inspired by the simple, but very evocative mark making on some aboriginal art. I decided to try and capture the movement of the sea from the horizon, to the waves breaking onto the beach in front of me against the pebbles, using just a few simple lines/stitches.

Thanks for looking in, and here's to stitch, cloth and colour!!