Last Thursday we had a church meeting. And a very interesting meeting it was, too, with lots about the proposed new building. Throughout the meeting I paid close enough attention to be able to give a fairly detailed summary to my husband afterwards. I only mention this because I also doodled throughout the meeting, and I wouldn’t like you to get the wrong idea .

Do you do that? Doodle during meetings, or in waiting rooms, or while on the phone? I do – I’m an inveterate doodler. Somehow it seems to help me concentrate better. Sometimes it also produces something usable, as it did in this case. I’d been thinking of toadstool designs for a while; in fact I’ve got a sketch and notes for a goldwork toadstool. And talking of buildings at the meeting brought them to mind (I used to love the toadstool houses that gnomes live in in fairytales). So I sketched a few toadstool shapes on the agenda. (Apologies for the slightly crumpled pictures – I had to retrieve this invaluable record of my designing process from the recycling bin…)

As you can see I drew some separate toadstool shapes first, then decided they’d look better overlapping slightly. When I got home I drew a larger sketch based on the overlapping version. This was then scanned, to be tidied up in my photo editing program.

While tidying up I decided that the left-hand side looked a bit empty, and as I love little creepy crawly critters as long as they are in needlework rather than in the flesh (or whatever real insects are made from) I added first a caterpillar (my favourite creepy crawly) and then an alternative beetle.

I’m planning to stitch three versions of this, in three sizes, one outlined in stem stitch only, one mostly outlined and partly filled in using a variety of stitches, and one filled in entirely using long-and-short stitch and ste stitch filling.

As I was getting the toadstools ready to print, I thought I might as well tidy up a sketch I did some time ago of a simple daisy and bumblebee intended for teaching. I haven’t decided how to stitch that one yet; it could work in goldwork, or perhaps in freestyle outlines it would be a good one for another workshop in aid of the building fund!