WINTER BLUES

The first week of February is a hard time of year.  Athough we've been slipping imperceptibly towards spring for sometime now, it hardly feels like it.  The winds are cruel, the days dark and short, and the earth sodden.  But on a rare bright day, it pays to take note of the striking shapes that bare branches cast against the sky, and the beauty of frosted landscapes:

I've been looking at fabrics that evoke the stark beauty of winter in a bid to banish these seasonal blues:

 Boeme's painterly Betula Northern Light is a impressionistic panel of wintery birch trees.

This is a Flockhart print called Winter Flower in blue, evoking that harbinger of spring - the crocus.

 Here's another revival by Flockhart of the work of mid-century textile designer, Eileen Guthrie, called Zig Zag - in grey.

  Lindsay Alker uses lino-blocks to create her designs which are then silk-screened onto heavy linen. This one is called Great Battle Wood in light grey.

 Scandi textile designers generally work hard to banish the winter blues by using huge amounts of bright colour and summery subjects, but Marimekko's Lumimarya is a clean intepretation of nature in winter and is one of my favourite Marimekko prints.

This is another Marimekko print, called Heina, with monochrome bundles of grasses, printed on fine linen. 

Mark Alexander's ethereal printed linen, called Bonsai Moonshine, from the Artisan Prints collection is so subtle and beautiful.  

I feel better already!