ruth.eaton

Each embroidery begins its life as a pencil sketch, then it transforms into a watercolour illustration, then into a thread sample and then, if it’s lucky, it ends up on a garment or an item for the home.

I have some tickets to give away for the
Selvedge Winter Fair in London on Sunday 23rd November. If you’d like to win a pair please drop your name in the comments (and your friend’s IG handle too if possible), like this post and follow (and me too please if you’re not a follower). I’ll pop the names in a hat and pick winners on Friday. 😊

PS I’m wearing the Adventuress dress in black poplin in the pics.

Can you imagine you’re organising a big event in London shortly before Christmas, you booked a favourite location months in advance and dozens of participants have signed up but then disaster strikes and the venue can no longer be used?

That’s what happened to the team at Selvedge who were geared up to present their 2025 Winter Fair at the same Marylebone venue as last year until suddenly a burst water mains scuppered their plans. Imagine the scramble to find an alternative central-city location for over 70 exhibitors!

But the team came up trumps and so, on Sunday 23rd November, Selvedge will be hosting the annual Winter Fair at Lindley Hall, one of the Royal Horticultural Halls, in Westminster.

Lindley Hall is a great venue. A classic Edwardian building it was purpose-built for the Royal Horticultural Society to house exhibitions of floral art and is light and spacious with a vaulted glass ceiling. Apparently its creation was the brainchild of King Edward VII who officially opened it back in 1904!

And I’m very happy to be participating. Dressmaking etc has been on the back burner this year (due to the distraction of preparing Easter Cottage) but it’s time to remedy that and after a fun and successful fair last year I couldn’t resist the opportunity to join Selvedge again.

I really hope some of you will be able to visit and I’ll be giving away some complementary tickets for the fair soon - more on that to follow!

Meantime, happy November!

A corner of Easter Cottage with a trio of much-loved watercolour paintings by (who also took this photo), plus some captures from Quebec.

After a two-month sprint in Rye over the summer to prepare the cottage, it’s just gone up on AirBnB etc. now (I need to work out how to put a link above) and is hosting its first guests. Though there are still a few details to sort out (a new house name plate, plants for the 50x200 cms (yes cms!) “garden” patch in front, etc.), I celebrated having almost finished by escaping to Quebec for a fortnight to witness first-hand the famous red leaves of Fall. It turned out that the autumn has been so dry that there were far fewer red leaves than usual as they shrivelled and fell quickly to the ground this year. Nonetheless, there was plenty more to delight the senses: not just yellow leaves but beavers, blue jays, chipmunks, red squirrels (in the forests - in Montreal the squirrels were grey and some even virtually black) and umpteen mischievous racoons which seemed unadulteratedly intent on devising ingenious schemes to get into the rubbish bins. 🍁 🍂

Greetings from Quebec, an autumnal wonderland painted in shades of yellow and orange and red. A little tricky (colourwise) for my IG feed so instead I’m sharing some images from a recent visit to Kettle’s Yard with perhaps the most famous pebbles in the world. How are you all?

Phone snaps from Málaga to say “Hola mis amigas!” (and show you the Summer Breeze dress in black cotton).

I spent a few days visiting my daughter and her husband and little 10-month-old girl, Eva. It was a very relaxed time that began with breakfast in the local café where the ancianas cooed enthusiastically over the baby before we wandered down to the beach. On leaving the café we passed through this little street of small houses that felt like a London mews. Ideal for a moment and there was even a white motorbike there so I could pretend to be a cool rock’n’roll grandma!

Moments from wee, wonky Easter Cottage...
Looking at the pictures, I’ve realised you probably can guess that I lived in France for 25 years!

The previous owners had looked after the cottage very well but had bright/strong colours throughout (including life-size pink flamingoes in the dining room) so I’ve only kept their dark blue in the sitting room which I’ll show you later.

1. Dubuffet in the dining room (not an original - such a pity!😉)
2. Breakfast with dahlias and Derek and delicious jam (raspberry with violets!) made by Marie of “O Jardin Sucré” .lheure.du.the
3. Bedroom “no 2”
4. Idem with the pub (oldest pub in Rye) opposite! It looks like we’re touching it but it’s actually on the other side of the street. I almost expect it to be called La Vieille Cloche!
5. Sweet details left by previous generations.
6. A little further down the road - love the house names here!

Everyone’s been feeling a little starstruck and dazzled in Rye this week as the town was transported back to the Regency era for a new filming of “Pride and Prejudice”. I loved seeing the little transformations in the town on my evening strolls with Sammie or walking into St Mary’s Church to find it filled with gentlemen sporting the most beautifully coloured costumes. As you can imagine, though, I was just a trifle disappointed not to find myself turning a corner and bumping nose to nose into Mr Darcy.

Succumbing to temptation in a favourite shop in Rye….

A quick update on the renovations in our new Rye cottage which are advancing well (while also reminding me just how much the devil really is in the detail) … I’ve selected favourite, calm colours (though also left some as inherited from previous owners, at least for now): “Wimborne White” and “Parma Grey”. This gives me a simple, unfussy canvas upon which to introduce paintings, furniture and textiles. And choosing these is such a pleasurable (and dangerous!) pursuit! Each addition is an excuse to visit favourite shops, many of which are on the doorstep in Rye, while collecting EBay furniture purchases have led us all over England where we’ve met so many kind-hearted characters - and some wonderfully eccentric ones too! ❤️

“My garden’s boundaries are the horizon.”
— Derek Jarman

Prospect Cottage, the filmmaker Derek Jarman’s home for the last seven years of his life, stands upon the world’s largest shingle peninsular in the shadow of the brooding Dungeness power stations. The area feels a little surreal, rather Wes Andersen-esque and some people I’ve taken there find it quite disquieting.

Yet Jarman loved it and created his dream garden there combining mineral/sculptural elements with horticultural ones: bleached bones, driftwood stakes and circles of pebbles alongside plants that were able to thrive thanks to the manure that he dug into the shingle beneath them. “Paradise haunts gardens, he wrote, and some gardens are paradises. Mine is one of them.”

Jarman also observed that: “Lawns, it seems to me, are against nature, barren and often threadbare.” Sadly, that feels like a very accurate (even complementary) description of my lawn as this hot and dry summer draws to a close.

Wishing you a Happy September folks!