I know its September, but I want to talk about advent calendars!!!!

Over the last few years, they have become hugely popular. The cynic in me goes – what a great marketing thing!!! Firstly, how they have become so popular and how the idea has been sold to people, these aren’t children’s advents I am talking about, but the adult ones – the makeup, gin, whiskey, craft beers, craft – sewing, cross stitch & crochet, the tea ones…..and on goes the list. The second thing is they are a brilliant marketing tool to get us to buy the full size of the product, we have tried it in the advent loved it and go and spend money!!! That’s the cynic.

The big kid in me, thinks they are fun!!!

Whatever you do, don’t go looking searching advent calendars – you fall down a huge rabbit hole of themes, everyone seems to do them now, from Liberty Makeup one in a box shaped like the shop, Fortum & Mason tea themed one, Molton Brown, Boots have loads – each makeup brands does them… Lego, book themed ones, Aurefil does a thread one…..pick a theme and you will find an advent calendar.

I can’t ever remember having an advent calendar as a child, we did have stockings, I remember those. The Christmases I remember from my childhood, were more about the adults and the same formula every year.

I have always done stockings at Christmas, for Tony and then for Laura, and still do. They aren’t hugely exciting, anymore, they are filled with things that will be used or needed – new socks, shower gel that sort of thing – definitely a Terry’s chocolate orange that is a must!!!

And Laura has always had an advent calendar, but not a chocolate one!!! As a toddler and most of her childhood Laura hasn’t liked chocolate – she does now!!! So, her advent calendar was 25 small fun presents, which was easy when she was little, stationary bits, little magic tricks, and always Haribos (still do go in her advent!!!), then for a number of years she had Lego advent calendars…. then back to me finding little presents. Originally the little presents would get wrapped up and strung up round the hall from the picture rail, then eventually I made a fabric one from Makower for her. The pockets on the fabric ones aren’t very big, so the Haribos go in the pocket and for those days that have presents there is a piece of paper with a number that she has to find the present with that number, and the presents are in a box nearby.

Style…..finding your individual style can be difficult, be that with clothing or patchwork quilts. There are social expectations and trends that often make it hard to see or find other ideas.

Let’s start with patchwork quilts, as I know my style, sitting at my kitchen table I am surrounded by my style of quilts. The Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham is over for this year, and although I didn’t go, I have seen lots of images of the quilts, from still photos to video walk around posted on YouTube. There were some stunning quilts, in all different styles and yet I didn’t see any that inspired me to create something similar.

I am happy creating quilts in my style, a style that has been moulded by years of quilt making, but really, I defined it in 2020. I wrote about it in a ramble years ago, lockdown gave me the time to really think about the quilts I wanted to make and by extension teach. I often used to create quilts because class members asked about a design or a method of construction, that I felt I had to be current and, on the trends, but I didn’t always enjoy making them and I didn’t love the finished quilts. 2020 gave me the time to think and work out what I enjoy and define my style – in the simplest terms Sampler Quilts, inspired by traditional and historic quilts, made using modern methods and quilt-as-you-go mostly, they are a combination of hand and machine work and are made to be used and loved.

So, I know my creative style, but my clothing style…..that has taken me a while to work out. I really admire people who have the confidence to be themselves, in their ‘image’. I don’t want to stand out, I am an introvert but at the same time I look at the fashion trends and ‘how to dress’ (in your late 50’s) and think that is not me, either the style, design or colour. But trying to define my style, clothes I feel comfortable in and by extension give me confidence, that has been harder to define. I have worn the same clothes for years, and I feel my old pieces aren’t quite me now, 8 to 10 years on. I like for summer cotton dresses/long shirts with ¾ length black leggings underneath, or black linen trousers with cotton shirts. I take care of them and mend them, but many are coming to the end of life and at the beginning of the summer, I looked at what I had and realised I needed a few new pieces, especially for our cruise. My dressmaking this year is for Laura, so I hadn’t the time to create for me and I wasn’t really sure what I wanted, what is me now?! I went hunting on the internet looking at all the usual shops, nothing I liked, then to other ones I wouldn’t usually look at. There were things that were ok, dresses I liked bits of the design, or the shape but not the fabric or colour. I did end up buying three dresses, which I am very comfortable wearing, they aren’t really what most people would call summer dresses but they are me.

Such a simple phrase that I posted over three weeks ago on my Facebook page, meaning I was taking a break from social media.

I was also taking a break, as in actually having a break, going away, being on holiday. We went on a fourteen night cruise to the Baltic, visiting Kiel in Germany, Helsinki in Finland, Tallinn in Estonia, Stockholm & Visby in Sweden and Copenhagen in Denmark. Being on holiday meant I also took a break from cooking, cleaning, laundry, gardening ….all the everyday things that I do in running our life.

And I took a break from stitching!!! The last class of term was on the Tuesday and there were no outstanding pieces to finish off, so I could pack away my teaching stuff till September. I had also finished my last cross stitch kit, the pages of the textile scrapbook and the panels of the quilt I was working on in June and I didn’t start any in the first few days of July, knowing that I had lots to sort out before we went away on the Friday, from shopping, laundry, cleaning, gardening, list making (for Laura & Maurice) & packing.

I had thought about taking some stitching with me, some postcards to embroider possibly. Then decided actually it would be nice to have a break!!! If I had taken stitching, then I would have felt that I had to do it and get it finished!!! I can’t be completely without something creative to do….I took my crochet, fifteen balls of yarn, squished down and fitted in the suitcase with my posh black-tie frocks and Tony’s suit!!! I had started my next Granny square crochet blanket on the 1st of June, over the month I hadn’t done much but while I was away, I completed the 100 centres, and then the second rows of colour, now I am home and back to ‘normal’ life progress will be slower!!!
Other than crochet, my other relaxing thing was reading….just sitting and reading for an hour or more, and not feeling guilty or lazy that I am reading when there is lots of other stuff to do. In all I read five books… the new Heidi Swain, a Jill Mansel that had been on my Kindle for months waiting to be read. Next was - To See Those Eyes Again by Kenny Rials, this is listed as a young adult Romantic Suspense – not my usual read at all, but Kenny works with Laura and this is the first book he has published, I have meet him when I have visited Laura at work. Laura got it on Kindle and shared it with me. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I really enjoyed it and knowing a bit about Kenny sort of made it more enjoyable. The next book was an autobiography Patch Work a life among clothes by Claire Wilcox, the blurb sounded interesting, she had been a textile curator at the V&A (my favourite museum and my favourite department) and the reviews were good…….well, there was very little about the V&A or being a textile curator and it was slightly airy fairy and jumped from era to era and it was all mixed together, a slightly odd read, leaving me faintly disappointed.

I thought as we are heading towards the end of June at high speed and it’s the mid point of the year, and it will soon be the summer holiday break, that I would take a few minutes to review how the year and my plan that I started at the beginning of the year is going.

If you remember back to January, I know it feels like a long time ago…. I wrote a Ramble ‘Hello January’ about how I had a plan for this year, how I would try to balance running two houses & gardens and caring for the family, with the creative side of my life and try to finish some of the many U.F.O’s.

It is a balancing act, learning to have realistic expectations of how much I can get done, I don’t have endless amount of energy, either physically or mentally and if I don’t get things done then I have had to learn not to be highly critical of myself. I know that I have high expectations of myself, I expect a certain amount of work to be done, and I worry about being ‘lazy’. I am very aware that this stems from being called lazy, repeatedly, as a child.

Overall the plan is working, some weeks better than others, things always get thrown up, that mean things have to change and I have to be flexible around my time, plus since January Maurice is needing a little bit more support and help. When things don’t go to plan, I have to adapt and sometimes just accept that the day hasn’t gone as I planned. Its learning not to get disheartened and overwhelmed, to reset my thinking, things will get done…maybe not today but eventually.

Mondays start with housework, then class prep and once that’s done I try to do a bit of stitching on the current quilt. I finished the Tilda Charm Pack quilt earlier in the year and since then I have been working on the Rose quilt, Laura has already claimed this one, it’s a slow quilt as its all hand quilted, so sometimes it doesn’t feel like I have got much done!!! But slowly stitch by stitch, piece by piece I am working towards finishing it.

Then Tuesday is class and when I get home its finish off anything left over from class. Wednesday is our housework.

Then there is Thursday, this is ‘my’ day!!!! My day to work on whatever I want to work on, whatever I need to do creatively, from drawing and painting, to designing postcards and preparing them for hand sewing – in fact Thursdays are mostly about Quilted Postcards, I have been working on lots of tree themed designs plus I have fallen down the rabbit hole of seascapes and wave ones. The Tree themed ones are for the next, fifth book. We haven’t set a date for publishing this one, I didn’t want to put in a publication date and find myself feeling pressurised to make it. This is one huge plus of self-publishing, I can work at my speed. I will say after a review of my box of tree postcards and sketchbook that I am further along from where I thought I was.

The ‘slow’ quilt that I am making and demonstrating in class is using a lot of my back catalogue patterns, and I have a lot!!! I have been teaching (on & off) for years and I have been making quilts even longer.

Its odd using patterns I wrote years ago, they are simply patterns, and it made me think about the progression/evolution of how I write instructions/patterns now. Lets go back in time to the beginning….

I first started teaching in the evenings in the early 1990’s, it was a different time for quilt making, everything was hand done, from the piecing, applique to all the quilting. There were very few books or magazines around and those that were, came from America – it was all very…..American!!! I would show how to make a design, I would copy the designs mostly from a picture, or from the Sampler quilt that I had been taught to make. The templates were in cardboard, if it was a block piecing then the class drew their own, if it was applique then the class would draw round my templates (I had to be careful to get them back), my teaching bag always had plenty of cereal packet cardboard for them to help themselves. There were no written instructions.

By 1992, I was drawing the patterns out onto paper, the sizes for any pieced block and the templates for the applique with a line drawing of the design and then Tony would photocopy them for me to hand out. Occasionally for things like tissue box covers or Etui’s I would write out the instructions on lined paper – I’m not sure how easy it was to read between my handwriting and spelling.

Not too far on, there was a big change in how we did the patterns, and at this stage they were just patterns, the full instructions came later on. Tony got a computer, the pattens with ‘You Will Need’ list became printed, I would do the list, draw the templates and the line drawing of the design and then Tony would turn them into patterns, which he photocopied and I handed out. It felt we had come so far, in just a few years.

Then I stopped teaching in the late 1990’s….there was a combination of reasons, the time needed to prepare for the classes, working full time as well, trying to finish doing the house up, time for Sam the dog and ourselves and we had been trying for a baby. Something had to give and it was the teaching…..

The years went by and I didn’t think about teaching, I was working part-time doing a full-time job as the buyer of haby & yarn, being Mum and running a house, I was still creating quilts, but I didn’t think about adding teaching to the mix. But I was made redundant and I couldn’t find a job, and people kept suggesting I returned to teaching, which is what I did.

I started back at the beginning, how quilts were made had changed, the rotary cutter and mat had arrived, new waddings, a huge range of patchwork weight cottons, many changing with the seasons, things were machine pieced and quilted. It was such a change. And the technology had changed – there was the early version of the EQ (Electric Quilt), I could change the sizes of patterns on the computer, print out the templates for the applique and line drawings of the patterns and I could draw up patterns if not in the library of designs. No more drawing out everything by hand, working out the sizes…. I added in very basic instructions – ‘How to Make’. Also what Tony could do on the computer with the layout and format of the design was totally different. Tony still printed out a copy and photocopied it for me to hand out – that hadn’t changed!!! These patterns weren’t full ‘how to’ they were about the templates, so that the class had them without copying, they were part of the class resources, watch the demonstration with all the ‘how to make’ and hints and tips, then you would go home and make it yourself, the limited instructions were just meant to be an aid to memory.

Tea as in the drink not tea as in the evening meal, which I call dinner but I know a lot of people who say that their evening meal is tea!!!

So, tea as in the drink…. black tea, green tea, white tea, herbal and fruit…. there are so many different types of tea on the market, but whichever you drink, tea is very British!!!

As I sit here typing this I have a nice mug – tea has to be in one of my special thinner Wrendale mugs and I am building up a collection of them. It started with my sister, Jenny, giving me the one with the tortoise on it ‘Aged to Perfection’, then a couple of years ago I got the Christmas one that I use from the 1st December to Candlemas. Because the ‘Aged to Perfection’ is no longer made and I don’t want to use it everyday, I save it for special occasions!!!! I got the ‘He’s a fun-gi’ one and then in March I got ‘Sleeping on the job’ – which is the one that I have my tea in today.

The tea I am drinking today is Whittards English Garden, a black tea with delicate notes of glorious rose, according to the packet a village fete tea for scones and strawberry jam. It’s a tea that reminds me of quiet summer days.

We have a rather large selection of teas in the house, from what Tony calls ‘normal’ tea, ie PG tips teabags, the tea that he drinks and keeps him going through the day. When I am at home, I regularly make him a mug, in his Le Creuset mug and take it up and put it on his desk next to him.

We have a lovely shelf of colourful Le Creuset mugs, we each have our own colours we prefer…. Tony has the red and orange, with a blue for back up, I have a dark and light purple with a soft green backup and Laura has the grey for hot chocolate and the three in bluey/teal colours for her teas. That’s another thing we have lots of Hot chocolates – Laura has a whole range of Whittards ones!!!

Sea, seascapes, water in any form, has always been a thing that I have not really stitched on my Quilted Postcards. I have ‘played’ with a few ideas, back in 2010, I did a few postcards based on our holiday in Cornwall among them were Boscastle and Tintagel ones. Tony loves the sea, and I have tried to create ones for him, based on photos we have taken…..but I have never really been happy with how the water looks.

I have tried using different fabric, painting on the fabric to create movement and also colouring with wax crayons, then stitching on top. I have also just tried to paint the sea onto white fabric, using crayons, watercolours and also Inktense, none have really had the effect that I want. So, I have avoided making postcards with water in any form on it, which is a shame as we have so many photos that could be used as inspiration for designs.

I have always liked the old railway posters of the 1930’s and I started looking at these, how they created the images of landscapes, they are clean lined and often simplified. Then over the last couple of years I have started to look at Relief Prints – lino originally and then lately wood block, firstly landscapes, and then recently seascapes.

Relief prints for the most part are very pared back, in the colours used, and in the details, it’s the marks and lines that create the image that we read and understand.

I started to really look at the relief prints I liked and read a few books and articles on how the artist’s work. Understanding the process and the mark making.

It is not far to leap to take the ideas of the relief prints into fabric, already there are similarities between my fabric landscapes with the simplified shapes to those in the relief prints for hills, moors and fields. I then go on to add the details with my hand embroidery which can be more complicated than the marks used in relief prints, or at least in the simplified relief prints.

There are some very detailed relief prints, with lots of lines, and hours and hours of work, these often work in just a background colour and then the ink that it is printed in – a very limited colour range often black only. Here again I see a similarity with my drawings, I like just drawing with black fine liners, onto backgrounds of water colour washes or I will draw first and colour in with pencils.

Time disappears, it speeds past, and we are already a quarter of the way through 2025!

Since this time last year, I have felt the ticking of the clock, I am feeling the weight of the time left in my life, if I live to the average age for a woman in the UK, which is 82 years old then I have 25 more years. I am in the latter third of my life.

That doesn’t bother me, my life expectancy, the quality of my life is far more important. I want to live a life that I can do the things I want, not limited by aches, pain or other physical problems, I am already getting aching joints and this winter my hands have ached a lot, especially when they get cold. I want to be able to go out and walk, do the garden, cook and clean, I don’t want to be a burden on Tony or Laura – I am a person that looks after things not the other way round.

But this time last year, I changed my opticians and went to one with new up to date equipment, just thinking that I needed new glasses ….to be referred to a clinic for further tests and to be told that I have Fuch’s Endothelial Dystrophy – this is a degenerative disease of the cornea, basically the cells in my cornea are dying and eventually this will lead to very cloudy impaired vision, it happens over time, ten to fifteen years usually.

The solution is a cornea transplant. Although the sight loss is worrying, I felt it was some years off and I can adjust to this….what absolutely freaks me out is the solution….cornea transplant!!! I understand other organ transplants but cornea ones ….

And I was told I had severe Dry Eye, I had put my irritable eyes down to Hay Fever!!!

From the clinic I was transferred to the Ophthalmic unit of Queen’s Hospital, where I had more tests and the Fuch’s was confirmed, and I was told I had cataracts. I’m in my late 50’s, I really didn’t expect to be told I had cataracts, they are things people have in their late 60’s or 70’s!!!

So, I have FED, cataracts and Dry Eye…. and this is where it gets to be a problem. The FED or cataracts aren’t at this stage affecting my sight significantly, they can be left for some time but no one can tell me how long before that will change. The cataracts will most probably be the first to affect my sight but and here is the problem, I can’t go and have a straightforward cataract operation because of the FED. Operating on the cataracts will cause the cornea to deteriorate quicker. When the time comes for the cataracts to be operated on then I will need a combined cataract/transplant op. Ahhh…freak out!!! Something I have to consider is that there is a long waiting list for a transplant, so once it is decided that I need the cataracts operated on, then I will have to wait two/three years? then there is up to a year’s recovery and I will have to then have the second eye done, back on the waiting list etc – the whole thing could take five or more years.

I have got to find the right balance in all this, not leave it too long that my sight is totally compromised. Within that balance is my stitching and creativity, I can’t imagine life without creating.

I feel that the clock is ticking on how long I have to do some of the more detailed stitching I do, from the embroidery on the postcards to the hand quilting and hand stitching of hexagons – all those tiny stitches needed to sew them together and the cross stitch. I am feeling the weight of all those Unfinished projects and kits that I have in the workroom, and that is why I am trying to work on projects…

My sight deteriorating doesn’t scare me, that’s life, I will modify how and what I work on, I can still be creative, the large hole tapestry cushions, crochet, knitting and as Laura said I can take up painting in the style of Monet’s Waterlilies!!!!

The transplant does scare and freak me out!!! and yes everyone has talked to me about it, yes my sight will be restored but…..I am hoping that by the time I need the operation they will have got artificial corneas. They are in the trial stage of them at the moment.

That is where I am, not knowing how long till my sight becomes a problem, beyond the Dry Eye and the light sensitivity caused by the FED, I know we don’t know what is round the corner and we can’t see into the future. What will be will be…..

And on that note time to get back to stitching!!!

Something away from quilt making or being textile creative, gardening!!!! As it warms up and we have had a few nice warmer sunny days and it begins to feel like we are moving into early Spring then my thoughts turn to the garden, helped by all the plant catalogues that keep arriving.

I get the magazine Gardens Illustrated – it really has some stunning photography, I am a little behind in reading it and am on February’s edition, all about plants plus there is an article by Nigel Slater about plant catalogues and ‘dream time’ gardening and for him rose catalogues ‘page upon page of soft porn, a veritable 50 shades of pink’ !!!! oh, I know so what he means!!! I love the rose catalogues – especially the soft pink and white pages, the stunning photos of climbing roses and beds full of beautiful roses. Every few days emails from David Austen roses drop onto my screen – showing delicious roses…….then there are the Sarah Raven emails!!!

Oh, its so easy to be tempted to just click on the link and off I go to stare at beautiful plants in stunning settings, from blousy plants like cosmos, to spires of foxgloves & delphiniums, towers of sweet peas and then onto every hue of dahlias. Its all deliciously beautifully photographed in wonderful combinations and stunning arrays of colour, just to tempt us to buy. And don’t be tempted to look at the lifestyle section…..

It is the photography that is so inspiring!! And I am tempted by those, I guess you could call them ‘cottage garden’ flowers, the roses, foxgloves, hollyhocks, poppies, antirrhinums, eryngiums, hydrangeas, dahlias and chrysanthemums, and pelargoniums to name a few. My dream garden has a wide border filled with clipped yews or similar for year round structure and then a wonderful plants and flowers all mixed together, a stunningly painterly herbaceous border of the RHS or National Trust gardens.

As a teacher I feel that there is an expectation that I should create quilts that can be made either in a ten week term or possibly two terms but certainly finished within the whole of the teaching year – 30 weeks!!! Or maybe that’s just how I see it?!!!! The class is mixed abilities from those starting their patchwork & quilting journey through to very experienced, there are those that like machine work to others that only stitch by hand. And I have those that create beautiful quilt tops and then send them off to be professionally long arm quilted.

I design the quilts I make, I am influenced by traditional and historic designs but use modern techniques. Over thirty plus years of teaching I have designed and created soo many quilts, and I rarely go back to a previous design, just occasionally I will but mostly I am working on a new design. A design that takes into consideration all the abilities, likes and dislikes of the class. There is a lot to consider.

I could teach using other designers’ quilts and patterns, but that is not how I work. I often find quilt patterns difficult to understand, the way the instructions are written, I think its because I probably have dyslexia (I have never been formally tested but…) and I am not really interested in making other people’s designs, I really enjoy creating my own patterns.

My teaching has changed, before 2020 and lockdowns, I would often make and teach designs I wasn’t really very keen on, they were things that I was asked to show. During the lockdowns I recalibrated my quilt making (and I wrote about this at the time), but life never stands still and things constantly change. At the end of 2024, I took stock, and as I have written in the first Ramble of 2025 I have recalibrated and come up with The Plan.

One of my U.F.O’s (UnFinished Objects) is the Textile Scrapbook. It’s probably best to start with a bit of background on the project - it was started back in the early part of 2024,so it’s not a really old project. I taught how to make the cover and one set of pages. It then got put to one side when I moved onto the next teaching project. I always meant to carry on making the pages and had a whole bag of bits that I wanted to use, but I just never got round to doing it. For a few months it was on my weekly list to do but then….I stopped writing it on and it got pushed further to the back of the pile!!!

2025 is the year that I am going to finish a few of my U.F.O’s, I have picked up a Tilda Charm Pack Quilt to do and also the pages of the Textile Scrapbook. In January I finished making one pair of pages and stitched together another page, which I am quietly stitching away on.

The pages are made up of one main piece - a sample piece of patchwork or applique, or embroidery or a repurposed cross stitch, round this I am machine piecing oddments of fabric to create a 9½” square – one page!!! This is stabilised with a medium weight interfacing and then I hand stitch on top. Sometimes I work one page at a time, others I make up a pair of pages.

I have no plan. I just find stranded embroidery threads from my large collection that match or compliment and then stitch. It can be simple lines of running stitch across, or hearts or flowers, just using my favourite simple stitches of running, stem stitch, chain or blanket and of course French knots.

Hello, January 2025, it’s a couple of weeks in and I have had time to settle into the month and year!

I don’t ever make New Years resolutions, but I do find that the twixmas time is good for thinking and working out what I want from the coming year and not make resolutions but to make plans – write lists and more lists and set goals and tasks, work out what I want to do.

Lets go back to the second half of last year, I had got out of a lot of my good creative habits, I hadn’t been doing half hour cross stitch each day, or monthly dressmaking days, they had all fallen by the way side! The only habit I had kept was my 10 minute daily colouring & drawing. I felt that I wasn’t really getting anything done – I had become negative and not focused on my creativity and frustrated at trying to fit everything in. I was still making, Sunbonnet Sue ideas for teaching and quilted zipped pouches for presents and a few other little bits.

We went on a lovely relaxing cruise just before Christmas and I did NO stitching, a little bit of Granny Square crochet, daily drawing, lots of walking and reading and thinking……working out a plan for how I could balance looking after two houses, laundry & cooking with creativity. And balancing all the bits of creativity from teaching ideas and plans, to cross stitching, working on Un Finished Objects (U.F.O’s) both hand and machine pieces, dressmaking, to developing ideas and patterns to sell, to making Quilted Postcards and thinking about writing a fifth book!!!!

So much to do!!! And not a great deal of time to do it all.

As we headed to the start of January I had a plan, one that I hoped would work. I had a nice new bigger sized planner for all the house side of things – my lovely, years old, leather personal size Filofax just was no longer big enough to write everything for looking after two houses in, for 2025 I have gone over to an A5 planner – more space to write more lists and be very organised!!! And of course I have my creative planner as well!!!
Caring for the family and cooking are everyday things, these form the start of the day and the end of the afternoon. Housework has its set time, our house Monday morning, Wednesday, and half hour Friday morning, then Maurice’s housework is the rest of Friday morning.

The rest of Monday is getting everything ready for class on Tuesday, picking bits up and sorting my bags. Then working on U.F.O’s either hand or machine bits, depending on how I feel. At the moment the hand bit is pages for my Textile Scrapbook, and for the machine is making the borders for a Tilda Charm pack quilt. This is the first U.F.O quilt to be worked on and finished, there are loads more to do afterwards, the list is long, from Laura’s rose quilt which is mostly hand quilting, to my everyday objects quilt again hand quilting, to Nine Patch scrap one to all those sitting in the boxes, hidden away from sight!!!