It’s ages since I wrote a blog post, mainly because I have been posting regularly on instagram and facebook and it’s so much quicker than blog posts My zoom classes continue with the same students that joined at the beginning of April in 2020. They are a fabulous group of women, kind and supportive and we have so much fun each week and have now extended to include a Quilt Along every Thursday. It takes a lot of leadership and work to keep the classes running but I’m not complaining, I love it, I love to keep coming up with new ideas, and when things go wrong eg my photos in the wrong order the ..read more

It’s a strange time for us all, what would I do if I didn’t have my teaching to do and a love of textiles The weather isn’t really good or warm enough to walk the hills all day. It’s been freezing and we have had lots of snow Ive put lots of pictures on instagram / facebook It has been a challenging time – no water for 5 days (frozen pipes and then no heating) – all is sorted now – thankfully I have been doing a lot of zoom teaching, I was really surprised at how much time my computer says I have been on line each day, I think that includes the time on audible but it is still a scary amount ..read more

It really must be time for me to update my blog as I’ve been really busy doing lots of walking, zoom teaching and making quilts and no time left to write my blog and there’s a tax form that needs to be filled in …. We have had a lot of rain but also many sunny days and as we now live in the hills it’s easy for me to get out and take lots of photos. I’m sure anyone who follows me on instagram / facebook must be sick of all my sunrise / sunset photos. But it really is beautiful and the day we had lots of snow and sunshine I took stacks of photos Here are just a few I’m still teaching my lovely ..read more

Today I wrote up possibilities for zoom teaching workshops. It is possible to deliver many of the workshops I would normally give, on zoom. I do not have dates when I will be giving workshops, and would prefer to teach a quilt group where there could be up to 20 in the class who all know each other Most classes will be run with the same tried and tested timetable During the classes I will show pre recorded videos, give explanations and demonstrations I like to teach for 1 and a half hours, maybe 2 hours in the morning and then follow it with half an hour maybe an hour later in the day at say 4 ..read more

Ive tried many times over the last few weeks to write a blog post and have given up. There’s so much that I could write and so many images I could include but everything feels so different and everything seems to have to be so instant. Who knows what tomorrow will bring Also – why do wordpress keep changing things – Ive too much to do to keep learning how to operate a whole new view to my blog – grrr Anyone who has been following my instagram will know that I have moved house to a beautiful converted barn up in the hills. We don’t have many neighbours and the views are amazing. It’s 2.7 miles ..read more

July 2018, and everything in life seemed good, no one could have predicted that my life would be as it is now. This week I listened to a lecture hosted by Compassionate friends by Maria Ahern. Her son aged 22 died 6 years ago and she talked about grief and amongst other things how she has coped She spoke about keeping busy, reaching out, and how she has helped other people in her role as trustee for the charity Compassionate Friends. I found her talk very inspiring. She talked about how the repetitive action of knitting and crocheting has helped her overcome her grief. I gave my first zoom tal ..read more

A few months ago we had not heard of zoom, now it is an important and regular part of my life, almost every day I have either a zoom meeting or some teaching. We have all learnt the protocol and I have it all worked out now, how to teach on zoom. It’s maybe a bit low tech but it seems to work. I use my pad for filming demonstrations with my angle poise type gadget, my phone for filming when I am at the sewing machine and put my computer on a shoe box. My weekly classes continue and they will do certainly until Christmas but I’m sure it will be much longer after that. I have plenty of ideas to ..read more

Its a few weeks since I wrote a blog post, I have to think about what has happened in the last few weeks. I should have written a blog post sooner as there is too much to write here – it feels a bit like a newsletter West Yorkshire are on another Lockdown, a crazy one where we are not allowed to see family and friends in our house or in the garden, and we are not allowed to meet them in the pub or a restaurant either, however we are allowed to meet in a public place. This looks like it will continue for some time as the figures in a certain part of Halifax are increasing. No where near us than ..read more

Yesterday I was talking with my zoom students about submitting work for an exhibition and working in a series At the beginning of lockdown we set up an International Textiles Group and our brief was to make a piece 60cm x 100cm with the title Magic Carpet. I made my first piece as it was a piece I had been wanting to make for ages based on my photos of Nepalese windows. I made about 24 small A4 quilts earlier in the year and I wanted to put some of my ideas together to make a larger quilt So I made this piece I knew I wanted to go simpler and more abstract and made a set of samples. I la ..read more

We live in a small village in the South Pennines with a small supermarket, with the moors all around us and we have had weeks of beautiful sunny weather so I really don’t need to go far. I’ve walked the hills, social distance met up with friends and spent hours in my studio. I have even cleared lots of rubbish from my studio. I miss my family and I miss traveling but I’ve no desire to go far right now. Teaching my regular students has really kept me trying to produce new work, sometimes innovative but other times it’s just nice therapy. They have all had more time so the makes produced by them ..read more