Singing Bird in a tree

This is a new design that I have been working on based on a singing thrush in a rather fantastic looking tree with giant leaves. I'm very fond of blackwork embroidery as well as patchwork and woodcuts so this piece has influences from all of those sources.  Lots of colours were tried for the surrounding borders but the browns and greens are still my favourites. 

There are so many poems about Thrushes but this is one of my favourites.

The Thrush's Nest

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush

That overhung a molehill large and round,

I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush

Sing hymns to sunrise, and I drank the sound

With joy; and often, an intruding guest,

I watched her secret toil from day to day - 

How true she warped the moss to form a nest,

And modelled it within with wood and clay;

And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,

There lay her shining eggs, as bright as flowers,

Ink-spotted over shells of greeny blue;

And there I witnessed, in the sunny hours,

A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly,

Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky. 

John Clare