Gates in all forms have been a theme that I have returned to time & again. I created my first Gate Quilted Postcard in October 2009, it was inspired by a photo we had taken at Tintagel Castle

It was ten years later in October 2019, that I first came across Moon Gates in a gardening book & so began my fascination! The first piece I created using them wasn’t a postcard but a Journal (A4) quilt. But after that they have become a theme, along with all the other types of gates – wooden, wrought iron….

Gates featured heavily in my Fourth Book, Quilted Postcard – The Art Edition, of the twelve designs, three were gates and another three doors!!! One of the designs was, of course, a Moon Gate & in the Inspirations section there were five other designs – including one of my favourite postcards – the Autumn themed spiders web Moon Gate!!!

Back in May of this year, I sat down to design a postcard for a birthday and ended up with four Moon Gate designs, different ideas just kept popping into my mind! This often happens, where one idea springs from another. I decided to create all four designs.
All four designs have a Moon Gate created in a stone wall, I seem to also have a ‘thing’ about stone walls. I keep a range of fabrics that work for stone walls and then I draw the stones on with a Pigma archival pen – its rather therapeutic drawing bricks and stones!!

The first postcard I created has a stone Moon Gate leading to a lawn and beyond a yew hedge with a wrought iron gate – a gate within a gate!!! - in the centre. At the front against the stone wall, is a climbing rose and some foxgloves. I find that when I look at it, my eye is immediately drawn to the wrought iron gate and then it comes out to the Moon Gate before finally seeing the plants against the wall.

The second postcard to be finished was the Moon Gate with a wooden gate, where does it lead? That’s the thing. I guess this might not be seen as a true Moon Gate, as the original Ancient Chinese Moon Gates were designed to be open as a portal from the mundane world into the realm of peace and enlightenment of the garden. But I wanted the wooden gate to feel heavy and strong, hence having the big hinges – inspired by those of medieval church doors, to give that closed feel.

I then created a more open design on the next postcard with the Moon Gate opening up to grass, trees and a wrought iron fence and gate, from a formal garden to the parkland of the Estate. The inspiration for this postcard, other than the stone Moon Gate, is the many visits to National Trust Estates, both Calke & Belton come to mind, where there are the metal fences and gates from the formal to more ‘wild’ areas.

Cow Parsley – Anthriscus Sylvestris to give its correct Latin name also known as Queen Anne’s lace (which sounds really pretty & dainty) and wild Chervil (which sounds like a horrible insect!) is a native plant to the UK and very common in hedgerows. It creates a beautiful froth of white flowers in May, along with hawthorn trees.

Its part of the umbellifer family and look closely at a cow parsley and it has this amazing shape, a shape that is easily identified, and easily stitched. It is a design that is very often embroidered or used on cushions & wallpapers & embroidered onto clothing. There is the most stunning coat in the V&A collection, full length dark purple velvet embroidered with cow parsley like flowers, it was made between 1895-1900 by Marshall & Snelgrove.

The cow parsley lends itself to being stitched and printed because of its strong architectural shape, whether it is in flower or in silhouette in a winter landscape.

I have drawn cow parsley as part of my art for a long time, and it has been stitched on postcards, as parts of landscapes, on gate ones…. Cow parsley along with foxgloves give that feel for me of wildness, countryside.

At the beginning of May while out walking in our local municipal park along the edge of the Ravensbourne River – this sounds really lovely and I picture a beautiful open river flowing along with pastures, edged with trees. Well, think again, the Ravensbourne River may have been that a couple of centuries ago, but now it is a tickle of water that is mostly enclosed in pipes and edged in concrete, there is the odd place on its journey to eventually reach the Thames that it is in the open and our local park is one. So, as we walked along the path, by the river with the few mature trees edging it, I noticed the cow parsley was beginning to flower, (initially my nose noticed it, as cow parsley and hawthorn make me sneeze!!!) but I didn’t stop to take photos….I went back the next day and took them!!!

From those photos I had two ideas for landscape postcards, both including trees … at the moment trees are featuring heavily in all my postcard designs!!! Both ideas got drawn up, and then I layered the fabric, machine quilted/appliqued and finally hand embroidered the designs, I was trying to capture that burst of Spring green and froth of the cow parsley creating a layer under the trees.

My favourite of the two designs is the one with the three silver birches, I think with this one I have captured that feeling of Spring, or it might just be that I really like silver birch trees!!! The other one is darker in colours, as it was darker under the canopy of very mature trees and I think, now it’s finished that the tree has become the focus not the cow parsley!

While stitching the postcards I thought back to all the other times, I have created postcards using cow parsley as the design or part of a design, here are just a few…