Welsh Tapestry Patterns for Home and Fashion Accessories

Anyone visiting Wales can hardly avoid noticing that there are a lot of sheep - about four sheep for every person living in Wales!

And where there are sheep, there's a woollen industry.

Today, most Welsh wool is used in the carpet industry but in earlier centuries, almost every cottage had a loom for weaving blankets and clothing, often in the traditional Welsh Tapestry patterns. And some of the original Welsh Woollen Mills survive today, some as museums, others as working mills using patterns found in the Public Records Office and dating back to the 1700s.

In earlier times, Welsh Tapestry blankets were given as wedding gifts and dowries and were kept as family heirlooms. More recently a Welsh Tapestry blanket was presented to President Obama when he visited Wales.

Everyone knows about Scottish tartans but Welsh Tapestry is less well-known, despite its long history and its 'revivals' at various times since the 1960s. Blankets and other textile gifts with these patterns, such as cushions and coats, are as likely to be found in Welsh Craft and Gift Shops as wooden 'Love Spoons' and Little Welsh Red Dragons.

But Welsh Tapestry blankets are expensive. Of course, they are not really 'tapestries' but a unique type of 'double-weave' cloth, sometimes known as double-cloth, and the weaving process involves, as the name implies, a complicated interlocking of two layers of cloth. So, while they are warm and hard-wearing as well as attractive, they are not cheap to produce.

As someone who lives in Wales and who is also addicted to pattern-making - and especially drawn to those with some kind of traditional or ethnic origin - it was only a matter of time before I turned my attention to Welsh Tapestry patterns. 

And I have chosen a few of them to use as patterns on non-textile gifts, such as coffee mugs and serving trays as well as cases and sleeves to protect your electronic devices!

Here are some of them -
Click on the image below to see the full collection - 

Pink Welsh Tapestry Gifts  

Click on the image below to see the full collection - 

Monogrammed Faux Welsh Tapestry Gifts

Click on the image below to see the full collection - 

Blue Welsh Tapestry Patterns  

Click on the image below to see the full collection - 

Black and White Welsh Tapestry Patterns

Click on the image below to see the full collection - 

Welsh Tapestry Sleeves  

Fabrics in 'faux' Welsh Tapestry, in seven types, suitable for anything from crafts and dressmaking to home furnishings are also available in my 

Posh'n'Painterly Cymru store. 

Here are just a few of them -

And if you'd like a 'Welsh Tapestry' fabric or gift in a different colour combination, just contact me through my Posh'n'Painterly Cymru store

 and I will quickly create it for you at no extra cost. 

PS If you are interested in learning more about Welsh Tapestry, 

HERE'S

a website to get you started -

Sheep From my Posh & Painterly Cymru Store!

Did you know that there are more sheep in Wales than there are people? (And because I'd never been to Wales at the time, I managed to mis-read an important exam question, and wrote a very convincing essay on why there are NO sheep in Wales - a great lesson in always reading the instructions/question!) So here are just a few from my Posh & Painterly Cymru store on Zazzle . . .

HERE

Black and White Welsh Tapestry Pattern . . .

. . . Device Cases

on my

Mugs, Mousepads and More

blog

 

Welsh Faux Tapestry Black and White iPhone 6 Case by poshnpainterlycymru
 

Surprised by Wales

When I took my ‘O’ level exams, aged 15, I made the classic mistake of not reading one of the questions on the Geography paper properly. 

So I wrote a well-argued essay that constituted one-third of the marks for the Regional Geography exam on ‘Why there are no sheep in Wales’.


As well as that obviously glaring misapprehension, I grew up believing that all Welsh people were 'not very bright', decidedly unfriendly and that most of them were called Taffy. 

Prejudice can be a powerful thing and my mother was certainly prejudiced when it came to the Welsh. I've no idea why!

But as a result, I had no real interest in visiting Wales until my eldest daughter’s love of horses and horse-riding led us to book a family holiday in Wales that included pony trekking. 

My first surprise, as we travelled westwards across South and Mid-Wales was that Wales was full of sheep! 

I’ve heard since that in Wales, sheep outnumber humans by three to one. 

My second surprise, of course, was the lovely warm welcome we were given in Wales, the absence of anyone called Taffy, and, as far as we could tell, no greater stupidity in evidence than anywhere else!

And the scenery was so breathtaking I could hardly stop taking photos even though this was well before the age of the digital camera!

While our pony-loving daughter was out trekking, we took her toddler sister to the coast and the first place we discovered was a tiny hamlet called Llangrannog, overlooking a pretty little bay.

So maybe that’s why, when asked to choose a Welsh Saint to illustrate to raise funds for this year's Los Angeles St David’s Day festivities, I chose the 6th Century Saint Carannog. He is said to have built his church here and there is a statue of him on the cliff-top, overlooking the bay. 

Or maybe it was because there was a dragon involved and I can’t resist drawing dragons.

In fact all the stories of the Welsh Saints are quite dramatic and bloodthirsty, with plenty of scope for illustration – a common theme being heads chopped off and then miraculously restored. Of course some of these embellishments are most probably metaphorical.

St Carannog, the story tells us, lost his travelling altar and his search took him across the River Severn to Somerset. There he met up with King Arthur, who had found the altar but would only return it to St Carannog in return for him overcoming the fierce dragon, probably in reality a barbaric local warlord, or according to some, a Druid, who was terrorising the villages in the vicinity.

St Carannog succeeded in taming the dragon without any shedding of blood and so the story ends happily.

Last year, I illustrated a Welsh Nursery Rhyme and the one I chose featured, not sheep, but goats! You can see it HERE 

I wonder what next year’s assignment will be!

Dragons and Daffodils for St David's Day

A new month, a new Birth Month Flower – the Daffodil! 

And for once it seems just right – when I think of daffodils, I always think of March, although I took this photo in my garden way back in the middle of February!




But the Daffodil is very appropriate for March for another reason as well. 

March 1st is the Feast of St David, the patron saint of Wales and the Daffodil is  one of the national emblems of Wales. So it all slots together rather nicely.

St David's Day Daffodils Greeting Card (Welsh) by poshnpainterlycymru
 

I get the impression that St David’s Day is celebrated more enthusiastically in communities around the world that have a Welsh connection than it is here in Wales. The Los Angeles festivities certainly outdo anything I’ve come across here in Wales.

Here's what I spotted in the window of one of our charity shops -

And this is how St David's Day is celebrated in Los Angeles -

You can get more details
HERE

But I can only really speak for Abergavenny, which is so near the border with England that it’s full of English people like me. 

St David's Day, Welsh Costume, Our Home to Yours Cards by poshnpainterlycymru
 

And even here the younger schoolchildren wear the traditional Welsh costume to school on March 1st. Tesco had the outfits and other Welsh paraphernalia on sale well before Valentine’s day!

I’ve been working on a pattern of Welsh national emblems for my Posh and Painterly Cymru store. The daffodil, the leek, the harp and the dragon, as well as the little girl in Welsh dress.

I couldn’t help giving the dragon a bit of a cheeky expression and I hope this won’t be regarded as an irreverent depiction of one of the main Welsh symbols! I think I’m influenced by the fact that on the whole the Welsh have an enviable sense of humour!

I noticed it almost as soon as I moved here in 2002. I went to concert given by a Male Voice Choir – South Wales, especially the area known as 'The Valleys', is famous for its choirs. It was quite a solemn affair and some of the singing was extremely moving. 

So it took me aback somewhat when the interval arrived and the conductor of the choir morphed seamlessly into a hilarious stand-up comedian!

Bilingual St David's Day Dragon Greeting Card by poshnpainterlycymru

Around the same time, I heard on the BBC Wales news that the number of prescriptions for anti-depressants in Wales far exceeds that of the rest of the UK, per head of population. And suicide rates are also higher. So maybe that sense of humour hides a darker side to the Welsh personality.

But surely the daffodils are an antidote to the gloom! 

St David's Day Greeting Card: Cute Red Dragon by poshnpainterlycymru
 

It has certainly been one of the gloomiest winters I can remember even though I haven’t been much affected by the weather at first hand. It has been relatively mild, though I’ve worn a raincoat far more often than usual. 

But so many people have been far less lucky. Power cuts have been widespread and lengthy, some lasting throughout the Christmas period. A great many homes and businesses have been flooded, trees have been uprooted by the gales, causing fatalities and damage that will cost millions to repair.  

And it just seems to have gone on and on. 

St David's Day Daffodils Greeting Card by poshnpainterlycymru
 

So this year, more than any, I think, the daffodils will be welcomed wherever and whenever they appear!

Are you using the four 'f-words' to promote your online store?

A couple of months ago, when I joined various online 'communities to sell my greeting card designs, I began to be aware of a whole new world of 'promotional activities' to bring customers to my online 'stores', such as the four 'f-words', favouriting, fanning, friending and following! I will resist the temptation to climb on my soapbox and declaim against the way that our English language is falling into misuse, such as adjectives and nouns being turned into verbs, when we already have perfectly good verbs at our disposal. It would be like King Canute trying to hold back the tide and I'll leave John Humphrys to have a field day on the subject - though I must say I am encouraged by the fact that my spelling and grammar checker underlined the words 'favouriting and 'friending' in red!

What concerns me is that these activities can eat up enormous amounts of time, time we could otherwise be spending painting, drawing - or doing the garden! And I'm not very sure how effective these strategies are when it comes to attracting buyers of our creative endeavours. I can understand that the more activity we can generate around our online presence, the better chance there is that our art will be seen and, possibly, bought. But how does having a 'fan club' of other artists and designers actually boost one's sales? Surely we need to be getting our work seen by non-artists, 'the man on the Clapham omnibus?

Of course it is encouraging to receive compliments on one's work - I think most of us need some reassurance at times. But I sometimes think that we run the risk of cheapening our praise if it is handed out too freely, almost automatically. When I am teaching my struggling readers, I do try to create a supportive atmosphere because many of them have suffered a great many knock-backs and their sense of self-worth has been dented. But I am careful not to shower them with accolades for every little thing that they get right and they know that when I do praise their work, it is praise worth having. Children are not fools and they know instinctively when they have done something praiseworthy - and vice versa. Similarly, if I have complimented someone on their art, it is because I really like it!

Sometimes all this 'fanning' can become hilarious! The number of emails I receive since I signed up to GCU and Zazzle has increased dramatically, mostly such things as notifications regarding threads on the forums or comments on my 'store wall' - occasionally the holy grail of a sale accomplished! Keeping up with all these is another drain on my time, but one email, a few weeks ago now, made me laugh. It was one from Zazzle, telling me that my fan club was growing. Fan club? What fan club? I knew about facebooks' 'fan pages' but had no idea that Zazzle had fan clubs too. But here I was, not only being informed that I had a fan club, but that it was growing!!! What excitement as I followed the link to find that I had............one fan!

I shall go along with all this 'promoting' for now; it's still early days and it seems to be the thing to do. But I shan't let it stop me watching Wales play in the Six Nations from now on! I only managed to catch the last half-hour of their first match against England and although they lost, the commentators commented that they did begin to play better in that final 30 minutes ie when I started watching. And last Saturday, I only squeezed in the final ten minutes. But what a ten minutes! When I turned on the television, Wales were so far behind against Scotland that I almost didn't bother to watch - but then things started to go their way and Sizzling Shane started to sizzle and, in the last few seconds, led Wales to a victory that won't be forgotten for a long time. I think I must have sent some 'positive vibes' to the Millennium Stadium and I shall make sure that I watch the whole of the rest of their matches, come what may!

I've also stolen a few hours away from the computer today to make another St David's Day greeting card, using the same watercolour pencils and watercolours method that I used for the Irish leprechaun and the Froggy Valentine. I'm begin to like the way this combination turns out and, once the drawing is done, it's quite quick - you can't hang around with watercolours in any case - and that's an advantage in these busy times.

My friendly dragon, both English- and Welsh-speaking, is available in the Zazzle marketplace and will hopefully be appearing soon in my GCU store, when the reviewers have approved him, which seems to be taking about a week at the moment.

Here he is wishing you a Happy St David's Day (March 1st) in the meantime -