Nature's Advent Calendar – A Wild Fairy Tale
Cloth of Nature Press | 2025 | ISBN 9781919311807 | Limited Edition – Out of Print
Born from years of sharing nature’s treasures each day through Advent, Nature’s Advent Calendar – A Wild Fairy Tale invites readers to rediscover the wonder waiting just beyond the doorstep.
Each page is a doorway — a small story, an image, a breath of winter meadow or starlit wood. Across twenty-four days of gentle magic, the story journeys from the hush of early December to the eve of Christmas itself.
Written and illustrated by Jane E. Hall and published under her own imprint, Cloth of Nature Press, the book celebrates the wild imagination, the rhythm of the seasons and the enduring connection between nature and creativity.
Author’s Note
I began writing this story during a time of convalescence, when creativity and nature together became my medicine. The fairytale that unfolded is not only about the changing seasons, but the ways we change too — how imagination can help us mend.
The Nature of Creativity: A Mindful Approach to Making Art & Craft
Merrell Publishers | 2022 | Hardback | ISBN 9781858947013
As we become increasingly aware of the power of nature to lift our spirits, so too are we discovering how slowing down, paying attention and reconnecting with the natural world can awaken our creativity.
In The Nature of Creativity, artist and author Jane E. Hall brings these ideas together through her own lifelong relationship with nature and making. As a child, Jane found happiness in playing outside and creating with the materials she discovered around her — from daisy chains and petal perfumes to tiny tea sets made from acorn cups and leaf saucers. That same sense of curiosity and wonder continues to inspire her work as a professional artist.
Jane explores how spending time in nature engages the senses, encourages playfulness and allows the imagination space to wander. Central to her philosophy is the importance of embracing the process of creating rather than becoming preoccupied with the finished result — and of recognising that creativity belongs to everyone, regardless of perceived artistic ability.
At the heart of the book are ten Creative Contemplations, inspired by Jane’s close observation of the natural world. Beginning with the simple pleasure of gathering a personal treasure collection, they develop into explorations of making with petals, leaves, shells, seed pods, twigs and feathers, alongside Jane’s exquisite embroidered butterflies and other nature-inspired work. Some offer step-by-step guidance; others tell the story behind a creation and invite the reader to follow their own imagination.
Illustrated throughout with specially commissioned photography, The Nature of Creativity is an invitation to look more closely, rediscover the pleasure of making and explore the connection between nature, imagination and our own innate creativity.
The Art of Embroidered Butterflies
Search Press | Hardback, Paperback & eBook
Hardback — ISBN 9781844485307
Paperback — ISBN 9781782219736
eBook / Kindle — ISBN 9781781269688 | ASIN B09TNQD5JP
The Art of Embroidered Butterflies brings together Jane E. Hall’s lifelong fascination with butterflies and her remarkable skill as a textile artist, revealing the observation, artistry and intricate techniques behind her three-dimensional embroidered butterflies.
Working with the finest silk threads and needles, Jane creates each butterfly’s wings using tiny stitches worked onto silk. The wings are carefully cut away and their edges strengthened with hair-fine wire before being attached to individually crafted bodies, delicately brushed with fine threads to recreate the tiny hairs of the living butterfly. Each completed butterfly is then placed within its own setting of silk leaves and flowers, created with the same close observation and attention to detail.
The book begins in the natural world, reflecting Jane’s love and admiration for butterflies and the importance of observing them closely in their habitats. Jane then introduces the materials and methods she developed to translate that observation into textile art.
Twelve projects explore individual species, including the Painted Lady, Small Tortoiseshell and Brimstone. Each reveals not simply the finished embroidery, but something of the creative journey behind it — photographs, drawings, paintings, colour studies and material swatches that demonstrate how observation of a living butterfly gradually becomes a work of art.
Detailed photography, including extraordinary close-up images of Jane’s embroidery, sits alongside her own writing to create a book about much more than technique. The Art of Embroidered Butterflies is both a celebration of these remarkable creatures and an exploration of the relationship between nature, close observation and making.
The Art & Embroidery of Jane Hall: Reflections of Nature
First published by Search Press | 2006 | Hardback & Paperback | Russian-language edition
Hardback — ISBN 9781844480388
Paperback — ISBN 9781844484843
Russian Edition — Образы природы в искусстве рукоделия | Кристина – Новый век | 2007 | ISBN 9785902059783
In The Art & Embroidery of Jane Hall: Reflections of Nature, Jane E. Hall brings together art, photography and prose to reveal the natural world that has inspired her life and work.
Through beautiful photography, drawings and Jane’s own words, the book explores not only her exquisitely detailed textile art but the creative journey behind it — from hours spent observing and studying nature in the field to sketchbooks, collected treasures, materials and the evolving work within her studio.
Working predominantly by hand with silk and gold threads, delicate fabrics and wire, and incorporating materials such as fragments of shell, iridescent feathers and semi-precious stones, Jane creates intricate three-dimensional interpretations of flowers, leaves, butterflies, insects and other fleeting details of the landscape.
Her intention has never been simply to reproduce what she sees, but, in her own words, “to achieve works which are not simply observational, but translations of wonder as well as nature.”
The book opens the door to Jane’s creative world: the landscapes and natural objects that inspire her, the tools and materials that surround her, and the intuitive process through which close observation, memory and imagination gradually become a finished work of art.
More than a book about embroidery, Reflections of Nature is an exploration of what happens when we truly stop and look. It reveals a creative philosophy that has continued throughout Jane’s work — that by paying closer attention to the natural world around us, the familiar can become extraordinary and our own imagination can begin to flourish.
