One of the pictures missing was the one I took of Jane Hall's small stand. Jane Hall is an embroiderer and a fabric artist with an enormous talent. She studied Design Embroidery and now works from her studio in Dorset.
I had the pleasure to meet this petite young lady at a talk she gave to our embroidery group a couple of years ago. Her work is beautiful. She takes her inspiration from the nature around her and the results are fantastic three dimensional pieces of art, worked mainly in silk, fabric & thread; many varieties of flowers, leaves, moths, butterflies, dragonflies, cobwebs, beetles, lacewings, tree bark; they all form "the cloth of nature", as she calls it.
I bought her book " Reflections of Nature" some time later and I am glad I did, it is a shear pleasure to read and to look at.
This is not "how to" book, there are no projects and no instructions. It is Jane's creative journey, from when she was a little girl, having tea parties with fairies and looking for tree-men in the woods with her grandmother. Her world has probably always been full of magic and this reflects in her work. She is an inspiration to anyone doing or interested in embroidery.
Please have a look at her website here and while you are there, do take a look at her wedding dress.
There is also a short introduction to her DVD: http://youtu.be/XEMQlw7YNSQ.