Knowing what you love
My BFF Joanna loves a specific range of sky-blue hues. She visited me recently and sorted through my piles of felt creations, scanning for ‘her’ colours. It was so much fun to watch her excitement. She said she would love to purchase enough of ‘her-coloured’ decorations to adorn a Christmas tree dedicated to my designs! How thrilling!
I took it one step further and quietly decided to find all of the colours in my ready-to-use felt stash that related to Joanna. It wasn’t hard. But my problem was that the red or yellow pōhutukawa flower just didn’t seem to sit on the Joanna’s sky-blue hues. Why not take the more impressionist route, I thought.
FUN FACT: I learnt classical piano when I was a teenager. The only composer that lit my fire was Debussy. I was felt transported (from my home town of Morrinsville) by the emotion and images the music evoked. My sister explained that his compositions were like an impressionist painting, like those of Monet, Manet, and Renoir. I fell in love with the genre, plus the composers of the impressionist era and beyond (Sibelius and Stravinsky, plus Satie and Fauré), and you can see that a lot of my paintings also express that almost un-focused flow.
My latest range of pōhutukawa flowers is therefore all about colour! I know that the reds, greens and golds of Christmas are always a winner – and I love them too and will keep making them. I also notice that on a Christmas market stall, those colours definitely leap out. It’s interesting how colours are linked with times of the year.
So, my sky-blue hues adventure continued. I pulled together felt, threads, beads, sat comfortably, and played The Front Lawn on my playlist as Joanna’s hearts gradually took shape.
As I sewed, I was able to keep Joanna at top of mind and inject my love for her and our friendship into my stitches. I recalled our ‘80s fashions and ‘bouffey’ hair and fun flatting together. Since meeting at Waikato University in the early 1980s (sooo last century), and being each other’s bridesmaids, and sharing the raising of our beautiful children and the love of our just-right husbands, I am so lucky to still have her as my friend. She’s now moved north of Auckland and I can’t pop round whenever I need a cup of tea, but that just makes sleepovers more adventurous, right?
Onto sewing the flowers… In order to make these treasures super special for my bestie, I embroidered an extra mini flower on the reverse of each heart. I chose one main background colour for each heart so that there was a connecting colour to sew together. Then, I attached the gold twine with a super fancy mini ‘gold’ bell to each heart. Ready for construction. I was already so thrilled with the way they looked. I sewed the two sides of the heart together with a tiny whip stitch around the edges, pausing to leave enough room to pad the hearts with stuffing. The finished result looked like fabulous fireworks to me, and they are now a new part of our friendship connection.
And for the lucky person receiving a commissioned handmade gift – like my sky-blue hues friend Joanna – there’s the joy of admiring both the maker’s skill and the beauty of the finished piece. At the same time, the maker gains a deeper appreciation for the person they’ve created it for. What could be better?
Do you have a favourite range of colours that always catch your eye? Email me with your colours and requests for commissions!
Visit my Sara Meade Design shop to explore my range of watercolour prints, greeting cards, and felt ornaments. I’m also providing felt ornament DIY kits as fully supplied kits, along with PDF knitting patterns for bouncing babies and cosy toes. My stunning 2026 calendars are available NOW!
Best wishes, Sara
