Hydrangea Inspiration

Every summer I fall in love with hydrangeas. I love their papery, multi-flowered blooms.

 I seem to forget about them a bit during the rest of the year and then, when we get to mid-summer, I start to notice their huge pom poms blooming everywhere and am smitten again. 

They come in such a range of colours too. Pale vintagey shades,

soft pinks,

violet purples

and those intense blues that I see when we go on holiday to Cornwall.

Gillian Clarke's description in her poem 'Blue Hydrangeas' really captures them, I think: 

'You bring them in, a trug of thundercloud, neglected in long grass and the sulk of a wet summer ... a load of night-inks ...their lapis lazuli, their indigoes tide-marked and freckled'.

They can be delicate and lacy.

Or have cupped petals.

Planted en masse they are a glorious sight.

For a while I've been thinking about make something yarny and hydrangeaey (think I just invented a word).

Last year I started to make some little hydrangea flowers. Do you remember me crocheting with my feet in the cool, crystal-clear river at Watersmeet?

Lots of little four-petalled flowers.

But I just couldn't decide what to do with them .. a purse or bag, maybe a hat? I put them away for the winter and forgot about them. I got them out again recently and decided that I must make something with them. No more shilly-shallying. Sitting in my shed last week I got some more hydrangea-coloured cotton yarn out, matched it to my photos and decided on a hydrangea wreath, rather like the autumn one I made and the Easter one too.

I found some deep green yarn too and a polystyrene half-ring that had been hanging around. I crocheted a long rectangle in green cotton yarn to match the size of the ring and wrapped it around it, sewing it into place. It's on the left of the photo below.

I hadn't written down my flower pattern last year and couldn't quite remember it, so improvised a new one to make little squarish four-petalled flowers.

Then I sewed tiny glass beads into their centres.

Before long I had 22 little hydrangea flowers. 

I carefully arranged them in groups of colours and sewed them all into place. Here it is, my hydrangea wreath - ta dah! I am very pleased with it, and have included all my favourite hydrangea colours in it: bright blues, intense purples and mauves, warm pinks and those pale lilac shades.

I've hung it on the door of my shed and am very happy with it.

See you soon x