Hello!

During my working life in textiles, I’ve experienced the magic of restoring, stitch by stitch, angels’ embroidered wings, the satisfaction of mending clothes for nursing home residents and the thrill of sewing Accession Labels onto eighteenth century garments. It is these values: of tending and of using the hands to evoke the marvellous, that underpin my creative work today.

For decades I’ve a made a living through plying my needle. In ecclesiastical embroidery workrooms, a nursing home’s laundry, in creative sessions I ran for those with dementia, a woollen mill’s mending room, and a rug weaver’s sewing room. And all down the years, through the needle’s eye I have been drawing not just a living, but ideas. I’ve facilitated and encouraged other people’s creative work. I worked as a visiting artist in primary schools, and memory cafes, and received funding to devise and deliver a writing/photography project in care homes.

It’s funny to think that I’ve probably mended a lot of the cloth that I’m now tearing up for use in my rag rug making! Tearing it not to destroy it, but to make something of it. Appropriating production mill waste for my own use, it’s of no import to me now, how well it has been mended!

Rag rug making is a textile form that was often used to bring depictions of the outdoors: the animal and natural world, indoors - into people’s homes. In my hooked pieces I like to convey moments of meetings with wild animals and birds, as well as still life subjects that feature my home space with its simple domestic treasures.

Living in a tiny cottage that is fairly well insulated, I tend to only heat my hearth, as I suspect was the way of previous occupants of my cottage some 175 years ago, who were also employed at the same woollen mill I worked in. So the hearth has long held a central place in my cottage. And what craft or art I choose to make, has to hold its truth there.

In these troubled times, stillness, reflectiveness and a sense of curiosity have an important place in strengthening our spirits and appreciation of the natural world. I am thankful for the peace I find at my hearth and I want to bring it offerings.

In my late forties, I tentatively entered higher education again, having given up a fine art degree when I was twenty. For me, art school had seemed too ‘apart from the world’ and I valued working with my hands. Aged fifty I finally gained a degree (in Creative Writing). From time to time I enjoy the creative challenge of finding words to support my textile work.

Committed to having a small footprint, I’m inspired by “dustyfoots”; those travelling peddlers who brought small-wares and sewing notions - as well as news of the wider world - to the remotest places. As a non driver, I go by foot, bicycle or bus where possible, and my inspiration often comes during these ‘slow travel ‘excursions.