When we bought our cottage, we had a nice sandy beach. The lake levels on the Great Lakes used to go up and down in roughly seven-year cycles. Then around the turn of the century, the water level dropped two feet in two weeks. Suddenly we had a 100-yard rocky swamp in front of our cottage. It stayed that way for years. Then global warming came along and the water came back up. However, the weather and neglect had converted the sandy beach to weeds.

What some call weeds others call wild flowers. The edge of the water came up to a bunch of bushes. In this work I’ve tried to create the wildflower meadow at the edge of the lake.
I created a fabric of weeds using Solvy, a selection of fibers and threads from my stash, and hand stitching rather than machine stitching. I stitched the fabric to # 10 needlepoint canvas. I then stitched the flowers and a lot of other things on top of my fabric which had an added benefit of attaching the fabric to the canvas.

I needlefelted the lake and the woods behind it. I stitched the cottage and surrounding trees.