gilhoolie 2021 round up!

January 20, 2022March 10, 2025 Julie Gardner2 Comments

I thought it was a good time to do a round up of last year, we are over half way through January after all! I always find it helpful to look through and realise how much I’ve achieved.

gilhoolie 2021 highlights went a bit like this (see images below from left to right):

My workshop was built in our garden in the spring of 2021. Oh my goodness, it’s amazing! So nice to have a dedicated space to be creative, as well as somewhere to greet lampshade customers (and store all those ring sets!)
I attended a brilliant lino cutting workshop near Oxford which reignited my passion for the craft. It’s on my list to do more of this year. Read about my day here.
I made lots more bespoke machine embroidered lampshades – this is one of my favourites, I love the yellow French knots. I have just finished a commission but will be starting some more of my own designs very soon, watch this space! See more in my shop.
As 3 above – this is the finished lampshade – colourful flowers embroidered onto a natural linen fabric, with a navy braid on the top and bottom rings.
Gold lined lampshades were very popular with clients – this one was made using a striking wallpaper, with mirrored gold lining and a dusky pink trim.
I reached 1000 followers on Instagram – quite an achievement for me, and I enjoyed embroidering this foxglove to commemorate it!
I made lots of little candle clip lampshades and particularly liked this fabric from Charlotte Gaisford, they worked out beautifully.
gilhoolie house illustrations – these are still going on in the background and I’m always over the moon when I’m commissioned to draw one. Drawn in black ink, with a printed gilhoolie patterned sky, a message at the bottom and the option to add a pet (I’ll do my best to capture a likeness!) This was of a family holiday home, a bit different from the usual requests but great fun to draw.
Last but not least, we had to say goodbye to our much loved miniature schnauzer Arthur just before Christmas. I’m still heartbroken but feeling a lot better (most of the time…)

I think I’ll write a separate blog post on my plans for 2022, I’m still going through ideas in my head, in amongst working on lots of lampshade orders!

Lampshades

New embroidered lampshade

July 30, 2021March 30, 2025 Julie Gardner2 Comments

Most of the time I’m working on orders that come in from interior designers who I work with regularly, and clients that find me on Google, from all over the UK. But when I get some free time I always go back to doing something creative, like drawing or working on my machine embroidered lampshades. I even bought a new shelf for my workshop to display them on (which I’m hoping my lovely husband will put up above my desk for me this weekend). Don’t get me wrong, as I don’t work full time I also get to do most of the errands and driving around, and housework, washing, ironing, gardening, cooking etc etc (but I’m not complaining!) I’m very lucky that running a creative business lets me do a bit of everything, including volunteering once a week which I love and find really rewarding (and lots of dog walks with friends, with the odd coffee thrown in). Can you tell I like to be busy?!

My next task for gilhoolie is getting kind of urgent now and it is to set up some kind of shop page on here so that you can buy these embroidered lampshades, or maybe I’ll just put them on Etsy, I’m not sure yet. They take a long time to make and the process itself is all very organic, that’s what I love about them. No two will be the same and they all feature my illustrations of flowers, taken from gardens I visit as well as the botanical books I seem to be collecting. I feel very lucky that I have the time to do this and now that I have my workshop to work in there are simply no excuses! The new space is working out brilliantly for making lampshades and being creative too, especially as I’m in the heart of the garden which is looking lush right now by the way.

Here is my latest lampshade creation in front of our new veg patch (lots of scrummy courgettes, tomatoes, beetroot, rhubarb, peas, French beans and broad beans in our cooking right now!)

And below are a few close ups going around the lampshade. The first is an allium as it’s opening up. The second is supposed to be a hellebore but it changed a bit as I started working. And I’m not sure what the third yellow one is but it’s out of an amazing book I found in Waterstones when we were in Bath recently. Spot the buzzy bee too, about to land on the hellebore!

This time next week I’ll be on a lino printing course in Oxfordshire as I’d really like to have a go at printing my own fabric again. I’m thinking about combining the machine embroidery with printing but not sure if I’m being a bit too optimistic, we shall see, watch this space! Thank you for reading…

Please visit my new shop to buy this embroidered lampshade and other one off gilhoolie designs.

Lampshades

Embroidered Lampshade Commission – Cheeky Cracker!

May 12, 2021February 11, 2025 Julie Gardner2 Comments

Last week I finished working on a rather special embroidered lampshade commission for a lady in Wimbledon. The brief was to make two large drums for her daughter’s bedrooms using ticking fabric that matched the roman blinds. They could be slightly different but with the same theme – Cracker the much adored family pet – a cheeky black working cocker spaniel. The design was to be a story along the bottom of the lampshade, with Cracker walking through flowers on one side and more flowers, a watering can, bone, ball and toppled over (I wonder who by!) plant pot opposite.

The design developed as we emailed backwards and forwards and spoke over the phone – I worked on sketches from photos of Cracker and we decided on the story we wanted the lampshades to tell. All part of the creative process which I love. Even down to the colour of her collar (orange) and her little name tag with a letter C on it.

Most of the stitching is in a dark grey but I also added some black to draw Cracker’s fur, and some white on the darker flowers to make them stand out. I added a mustard yellow French knot on each of the daisy flowers.

They were finished off with a beautiful simple plain straight braid from JA Milton in a gorgeous green on the top and bottom rings. We thought it looked a bit like Cracker was walking on grass and it contrasts really well with the other colours in the stitching and appliqued fabric.

See for yourself on the many photos below, from the initial design drawing to the finished pieces of art in situ. I hope the little girls love and treasure them as much as I enjoyed making them! One of the girls is apparently angling for anther puppy, spot the sign behind one of the lampshades 🙂

If you would like to commission your very own piece of art on a lampshade do get in touch, I’d love to hear from you!

Decorating Projects · Interior Design · lock-down

Welcome to my studio!

July 1, 2020February 11, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

We were incredibly lucky to have our kitchen/dining room (which is also my lampshade workshop) decorated just before lock down and I have been meaning to share it on here since then so I’m sorry it’s taken so long. I adore this space. It’s so light and airy but also very cosy in the winter. I can step straight into the garden for a stroll and look at the flowers or make myself a cup of tea whenever I need a break. The only down side is that I have to tidy everything away at the end of a day and everyone obviously gravitates here when they get hungry (which is quite often when you have two teenage boys living in the house!) It’s been accentuated during lock down for sure with four of us living here. So I am seriously considering building a workshop in the garden where I can really get away from it all and absorb myself in making. But for now I’m very happy and grateful to have this space.

I have been busy working on my own machine embroidery designs which I will be adding to my Etsy shop. These are all botanical themed so far and I have used them to make cushions and lampshades. I’d like to come up with a collection that I can sell eventually but it’s early days as I’m trying things out and having fun experimenting. One good thing about lock down, I have plenty of time to do this and seem to be quite inspired! Yesterday I spent all afternoon coming up with a design and started cutting fabrics to stitch on.

Anyway, back to my kitchen/dining room/workshop… Here it is. The walls are painted in Little Greene china blue, with a slightly lighter tone in the kitchen area as it can be a bit dark in there at certain times of day. The wallpaper is also from Little Greene and is called Fern in sage blue. It wraps around two walls and makes a cosy seating area in one corner. I admired this wallpaper in one of Samantha Johnson’s designs in Taplow – see her gorgeously clever interior design work here.

We already had the two seater sofa which is from Made.com. And my favourite velvet Calvin armchair is from Atkin & Thyme. Glass pendant over the dining room table is quite old but I still love it (from Next). Lampshades by gilhoolie. Glass cabinet from Ikea. Anglepoise original 1227 dark blue ceiling lights from John Lewis. Dining room table and benches from Habitat.

So you see, what a lovely space to be creative in. Next project, our master bedroom! I have ordered new furniture but we need to get on and decorate before it arrives, I’m off to get paint sample pots…

If you would like to order a lampshade for your own house please get in touch. I can help with sourcing fabrics to fit in with your scheme. Check out my instagram account for lots of images of previous makes.

Sewing projects · Textile Design

How to – Machine Embroidery

June 29, 2020March 10, 2025 Julie Gardner2 Comments

Lock down has certainly given me lots of time to play and get back into things that take a little time, like machine embroidery. I love combining drawing with little tiny stitches, attaching pretty fabrics as I go.

I start by drawing in my sketchbook in pencil. I’m lucky to have a garden and fields nearby so most of my subjects are botanical lately although I also like drawing buildings and pets. I also like to ink it in so that it’s nice and neat and I can start to imagine how it will look on fabric. This helps you to see the design through the fabric when you transfer it too.

I prepare my fabric (usually a medium weight linen as I like the texture it has) by spraying it with starch spray and then ironing it. This just stiffens it a bit so that I don’t need to use an embroidery hoop. But you can use a hoop if you prefer, there are no rules!

Once the fabric is ironed dry I draw the design onto my fabric using a washable fabric pen (so that it can be removed once you’re done stitching). If I can’t see through the fabric very well I use a light-box but you can just hold it up to a window if you don’t have one.

The blue is washable fabric pen – it just washes off when you have finished

I use a special embroidery foot for my sewing machine, it just has an open ring that the needle goes through so you can see where you’re stitching. It’s really important that you lower your sewing machine’s feed foot too, so that the fabric can move freely as you stitch.

I usually cut little snips of fabrics and lay them out on my design so that I can see if they will work. Then, once I have decided on colours and patterns, I iron them onto the main fabric using bondaweb. It just stops them from moving around while you stitch. It’s very easy to use. You iron it onto the wrong side of your fabric and peel off the backing. Then iron it in place before you start stitching. That’s what I have done for the leaf in the image above.

See, I told you it takes a while! Now you’re ready to start sewing! Just relax and go with it. Set the speed to relatively fast and have fun drawing with tiny stitches. I always use a medium grey Gutterman 100% polyester thread so nothing special. Maybe have a practice on a scrap of fabric first if you need to. Occasionally the stitching goes a bit crazy and I end up with lots of stitching underneath – that’s why it’s best to practice first. If this does happen you just need to adjust your sewing machine tension as it’s probably too tight.

I have just finished this drawing of a prayer house plant. They have beautiful striped green leaves that are a burgundy colour underneath. The leaves lie flat during the day and fold upward at night, as if in prayer. I recently re-potted this one into a pretty patterned pot from Anthropologie and it’s really happy, sprouting new shoots (which in turn makes me happy!)

Read more about machine embroidery in another blog post here.

Do get in touch if you need help with machine embroidery, or if you would like to commission a drawing or lampshade.

NEW! gilhoolie embroidered lampshades collection – check out my little pieces of art wrapped around a light, available to buy now.

Artwork · Sewing projects

A little machine embroidery lesson…

June 25, 2015March 23, 2025 Julie Gardner8 Comments

I love drawing but always feel as though I should take up painting or go back to screen printing or something to bring my work to life and give it colour and depth. The only problem is I think I’m a bit too lazy to get the paints out and I don’t really have a space dedicated to messy screen printing equipment just yet; as much as I love the effects it can produce. I’m, much more likely to have a play with my drawings in PhotoShop which is fine, but sometimes it feels a bit like cheating to me.

Anyway, I haven’t been completely lazy and have been really enjoying working on my drawings with lots of machine embroidery lately which is great fun.

I was inspired to get my sewing machine out of it’s cover when I visited the Affordable Art Fair at Battersea earlier this year. When I walked into the show the first thing I saw was an artist sitting at a sewing machine and I had to go and have a look. Harriett Riddell was artist in residence for the evening and was surrounded by ‘spectators’, avidly watching as she casually machine embroidered portraits for just £40 each in half an hour. I loved her quirky free style and couldn’t believe that she did it all without drawing anything first!

Harriet Riddell of InStitchYou portrait at the Affordable Art Fair

And now for the machine embroidery lesson…

I’m not quite so brave… yet. I like to draw on paper first, then, if it’s a drawing I really like and I think it would look good on fabric I prepare for machine embroidery by tracing the drawing onto some fabric using a washable pen. I starch the fabric first – this makes it easier to sew using a sewing machine and means you don’t need to use an embroidery hoop which can be a bit cumbersome.

You need a special foot for machine embroidery – see the photo below – it has a kind of ring foot so that you can see where you’re sewing. It’s also vital before starting to lower the sewing machine teeth – this means that you can move the fabric freely, rather than sewing in straight lines. Set the sewing machine to a normal stitch and don’t go too slow. Just practice on a scrap of fabric first; try writing, it’s very liberating once you relax and un-hunch your shoulders!!

Here’s a picture I took when I was working on my first machine embroidery flower picture – dried poppy seed heads. The blue lines are from the washable pen and have to be washed out after sewing. I like the way machine embroidery gives the drawings a sketchy feel and I’m getting better at accepting the fact that they can’t be perfect (and it’s actually best that they aren’t!) I’m on my third flower drawing now and I have become much better at drawing the outline first but then filling in a lot of the detail as I go; using the needle as if it were a pencil.

Once I have stitched the outline of the drawing I get out my stash of fabrics and choose 2 or 3 I think would work to add some colour and pattern. I attach the fabric by ironing on Bondaweb – all a bit fiddly but it stops it moving around and means you don’t have any messy glue or sharp pins in the way. Then you can get sewing again. It’s definitely not something to do if you’re in a rush or not feeling very patient!

Sometimes I add paper too – here’s the same drawing a bit further on:

And here’s the final piece. I think it’s my favourite one so far and that’s because it’s very simple and I really like the colours (grey and yellow always a favourite) and shapes of the flowers. Watch out for more on the other drawings in future blog posts.

For now though, my latest project is to cover some foam on a window seat in our new dining room, hopefully edged with contrasting binding (arghhh!) A bit of a challenge as I haven’t made cushions for a long time; I think I’ll have to watch that video on inserting a zip again first!!

Since this I have started a gilhoolie embroidered lampshade collection – you can see them here, available to buy or commission now.

Inspiration

Hello 2013!…

January 1, 2013February 16, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

It’s time to look back at the last twelve months at gilhoolie and make some real plans for 2013. Sometimes I can’t believe some of the events below only happened a matter of months ago and I have to say, I’m really looking forward to more fun and learning in the next twelve months.

So, goodbye 2012, when gilhoolie (kind of in order)…

1. …drew lots of retro kitchen drawings that I later machine embroidered onto tea-towels; I still have my favourite ones on display in my kitchen and you can buy them on etsy…

2. …learnt how to make hand-stitched lampshades at Homemade London. I was taught by the very lovely and incredibly talented Angela Constantinou from Cocoon Home. I think this was a real turning point for me in terms of where I wanted gilhoolie to go…

3. …taught my first lampshade workshop which was featured in From Britain With Love coursenotes. I now teach regularly at Make & Do in Caversham and will be teaching at Hands on Art Adventures in Old Windsor this year too. I taught a lot of 1-2-1 lampshade lessons at my house in Maidenhead in 2012. I love it; it’s so nice to be with other people and see their faces light up when a lampshade comes together looking beautiful!

4. …felt ready to change my logo to represent what I wanted to do with gilhoolie. I still like it a lot, luckily, it’s very me!

5. …dabbled with machine embroidery a bit more, to give my drawings another dimension – I really want to do more of this soon…

6. …made my first big hand-stitched lampshade commission for an Interior Designer in Maidenhead. This was very exciting, if a little nerve-wracking but it turned out amazingly after an awful lot of hard work and dedication…

7. …made lampshades from wallpaper and comic books including Tintin and Spiderman…

8. … drew lots and lots of house pictures for various people – more on those soon…

And hello 2013 when gilhoolie plans to…

…make a collection of big hand-stitched lampshades to sell on my website

…improve my website to make it more professional but carry on blogging too

…continue working with Interior Designers to make beautiful lampshades that match a room design

… do more of the following – drawing, teaching, sewing, machine embroidery, decorating my house

… learn a new skill – can’t wait for my crochet workshop at Make & Do later this month!

So you see, still lots to do and lots to learn in 2013, Happy New Year everyone!

Artwork

Lampshade decisions…

May 21, 2012February 8, 2025 Julie Gardner1 Comment

Oh dear, another dilemma at gilhoolie! This time, what to cover my big antique lampshade in. I’ve been trawling the internet since I stumbled across my lovely lampshade and base in an antique shop and finally made a decision today, hooray!

You know when you have an idea in your head and you just can’t find the right combination of pattern, colour texture etc? This was one of those occasions…

I decided to go with something quite traditional to match the base and even though I’m not much of a rose person, I really like this antique rose floral bouquet on beige by Lecien, from Cool Calm Collected. I hope it’s as beautiful in real life, that’s the only problem with ordering fabric, or anything else over the Internet!

I’ve also been thinking about ideas for a machine embroidered lampshade and as butterflies and bugs seem to be in at the moment I sketched a dragonfly last week and had a play around with it in Photoshop. I’m not sure how it’s all going to look in the end but it’s fun experimenting and a good excuse to have a go at some machine embroidery again later this week hopefully. It couldn’t be more different to my antique lampshade but it’s good to mix things up a bit!

Sewing projects

Practice makes perfect…

May 17, 2012February 8, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

It’s been all about practicing this week. I finally stripped my old lampshade frame yesterday. I think I had been putting it off because I was worried about what I’d find and there didn’t seem much point until I had chosen some fabric to recover it with. Amazingly, the horrible, faded, dusty cover came off (very stubbornly, a lot of sewing to unpick), to reveal a frame that is in absolutely perfect condition. The stand still needs some TLC but at least I can get on and cover the lampshade now. Oh, and I made another trip to my local antique shop and found another lampshade frame, much smaller but still really good to practice on.

Bare lampshade frame — What fabric to choose?

I also had a bit more practice at machine embroidery the other day and decided to copy my new logo onto some fabric to see what it looked like. I think it adds to the hand-drawn feel of the logo and it was nice to add a bit of colour for the two tulips.

My new business cards arrived too, no going back now!

Sewing projects

Our house is becoming a gilhoolie gallery…

May 10, 2012February 8, 2025 Julie GardnerLeave a comment

I keep telling myself it won’t be long until the sun’s shining so that I have an excuse to buy some new clothes, have a barbeque and sit in the garden sipping a nice cold glass of Pimm’s… well you have to dream don’t you?! At least I finished this machine embroidered picture today, oh and I think this weekend is going to be dry too, hooray!

I delved into my fabric scraps bag (which is growing by the day) and decided to use the floral Liberty fabric from my last empire lampshade for the detail on the Pimm’s bottle. It has a really summery feel and I love the colours too. The main stitching on the picture is in a light grey but I added a gold/yellow thread for the writing on the bottle and the crown of course.

Pimms machine embroidered closeup — A close-up of the label

Last week I made a cushion and it reminded me that I don’t really enjoy making soft furnishings any more; far too many straight lines and neatness required. But drawing with my sewing machine is another matter entirely and as I get better at it the more fun it is and the less tense I am as I sew. I think I’ll frame this picture and put it on the wall in my kitchen, to add to the gilhoolie gallery (sorry family!)