Did you know that Wood, my last name, is Scottish? When my aunt Bertha visited Scotland, she was surprised by how many Scottish people shared our last name. In fact, the Wood clan has its own registered plaid! (It’s a little different from the plaid I designed, which you’ll see later in this blog post.)
Like many people, I’ve done my DNA analysis, and my ancestors hail from all over the British Isles, including Scotland, Ireland, England, and Wales. (I have a little bit of French and German ancestry too.) What do these people have in common? If you go back far enough into the history of the British Isles, there were Celtic people living all over these regions.
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The design I painted with the seahorses is my own interpretation of a famous Celtic shield called the Witham Shield, which is housed in the British Museum. The folks from the British Museum have interpreted the animals on the Witham Shield to be swans, but I wondered if maybe the designer of this shield was trying to create seahorses.
So I made my own version of the Witham Shield, painting detailed seahorses swirling around in the shield’s circular area. Watch the video below and you’ll understand why the museum experts have decided there are swans engraved on this shield. Let me know what you think. Could they be seahorses?
Celtic artwork has always fascinated me. In fact, I first picked up embroidery in college because I wanted to learn how to do Celtic knotwork with embroidery.
At that time, I purchased a book of iron-on transfers of fantastic Celtic knots and Celtic animals, called Celtic Iron-on Transfer Patterns by Courtney Davis, and if I recall correctly, the first few pages of the book showed me how to do basic embroidery.
I had a grand plan to embroider a massive royal blue blanket with beautiful Celtic knots encompassing the perimeter of it. (Isn’t it funny how, when we first start a project, we have all those grand plans?) But I never finished the blanket, and when my kids were born, I cleared out my craft room to make way for a nursery, donating the unfinished blanket to a local charity shop.
However, from those humble beginnings, I began exploring the idea of adding embroidery to my handmade doll clothes, which did turn out to be a wonderful idea! The small scale of doll clothes canvases made it easy to create embroidered borders, flowers, and leaves.
My interest in Celtic art and Celtic knotwork has never left me, but my embroidery branched out, inspiring a whole series of basic embroidery tutorial videos, which you can find right here on ChellyWood.com.
And as it says in today’s video, I’ve begun expressing my fascination with Celtic art through watercolor painting and gouache painting, which I’ve been turning into various fabrics.
If you’re looking for some St. Patrick’s Day fabric to make doll clothes with, I’ve altered this original image of a Celtic plaid and made it into a very teeny-tiny plaid in my Spoonflower store, so we can all use it for doll clothes:
You’ll find that prices for fat quarters in my Spoonflower store are not cheap. That’s because Spoonflower creates their fabrics with earth-friendly, sustainable products. So if you do decide to buy one of my fabrics, you’re not only helping me out, but you’re making a statement that eco-friendly fabrics are important to you.
I bought my own Art Deco design from Spoonflower, in a quilter’s “fat quarter” size, and while my computer has been at the fixit shop, I’ve been designing an outfit for American girl dolls that I plan to use this Art Deco fabric with:
I’ve recently entered the Spoonflower fabric contest as well, and I’d love to have you vote for my fabric! This contest is for a Mediterranean themed fabric, so I created a fabric called Sardines Sand Sea and Stone, which uses my photos of stones and my own gouache paintings of sardines! (See close-up image below.)
It’s what’s called a “cheater quilt” because it uses squares like a real quilt, and each square is a slightly different design. I really used a lot of my different skills to make this pattern — digital art, photography, and painting.
As I’ve been saying, while my computer has been in the shop, I’ve been spending my time learning new skills, including how to work with my phone to create digital art. Can you believe it? The learning curve has been challenging!
So I’d be truly honored if you’d vote for my cheater quilt pattern, Sardines Sand Sea and Stone, in the Spoonflower challenge! Here’s a link to my Spoonflower store, where you can see my fabric design in greater detail, and this link will take you to the Spoonflower challenge voting page.
The challenge you’re looking for is called Mediterranean Hues. And my fabric is titled Sardines Sand Sea and Stone.
After you’ve visited my Spoonflower store, come back and give me ideas about what I should design next, both in terms of doll clothes that might suit my fabrics and artistic projects for future fabric designs, and don’t be afraid to give me constructive criticism. I’m always learning!
REFERENCES:
- Artist unknown. “The Witham Shield.” [Medium: copper alloy]. 400 BC to 300 BC. The British Museum, London, Accessed 6 August 2025. © The Trustees of the British Museum. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1872-1213-1?selectedImageId=33879001
- The British Museum. “Hidden Animals in Celtic Art: Ep 1 The Witham Shield.” YouTube. 30 March 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzEX6A1cXwA
- Wikipedia contributors. “Scottish people.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 30 Jul. 2025. Web. 6 Aug. 2025.