I really love tulips with their many shapes patterns and colours. And May in my garden was filled with tulips. I first fell in love with the flower when I read about the history of tulips and my home town Bergen.

A young Doctor, Henrik Höjer, travelled to the University of Leiden, Holland to take his examen. There he met and befriended Charles de L’Ecluse. When he moved back to Bergen three years later, 1596, he brought with him many bulbs and thus introduced the tulip to Norway. He continued to receive bulbs from Charles de L’Ecluse for years to come.

There even is a tulip that only exist in Norway, named Tulipa norvegica.

So it was natural for me to use tulips as my theme for the May book. I picked up all my tulip stamps and sprayed, printed and draw tulips on a big sheet of paper:

After cutting it up and made a book of it the result is like this:

I have also working on some ideas from my design wall, trying to get together some new quilts. Back on my Dragonfly theme, this first one is a piece of paper used to blot of some printing and painting:

I thought it would be a great background for some machine embroidery, so I bonded it to wadding, and surrounded it with strips of old sari-silk. I have never used paper in my works before, so this is a try and learn. Will the paper hold all the stitching from the machine embroidery? Time will show. It is up on the design wall while I figure out how to proceed.

The next one has been waiting for a year for me to proceed. I tried to bleach the sari strips used, but it didn’t work, so I painted it instead. The dragonfly is free machine stitched, and painted as well. Now I have to deal with the background, what to do next.

As you see, they can end up well or be total failures. Time will show.

I hope you have enjoyed this glipse into my creative life.

Enjoy your summer, keep distance and be safe.