My Ramblings 2025

Welcome to my ramblings, my version of a blog. I intend to update it just to tell you what is happening craftwise in my life.

Sea & Seascapes

26-04-2025

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.

From Landscapes and trees, I moved onto looking at seascapes, looking at the colours used, and the marks created. Marks that can be translated into stitch – simple lines and dots – French Knots…..pared back images of single colour water and simple lines that we read as sea, I don’t have to try to make the sea as real as possible, a simplified pared back sea, still reads as sea!!!! This breakthrough has freed my ideas up and has opened up a whole wealth of ideas….they were all bubbling away in my brain.

Then I was asked if I would do an ‘Art’ project for teaching in the summer term, & a while ago another class member asked about seascapes – do I create them? Lots of threads all came together and I thought – yes, I would teach an ‘Art’ project in the summer term, and it would be a seascape.

I started to pull all my ideas together, referencing all the relief prints I have studied, creating small drawings, in pen, watercolours, pencils and on coloured card. I decided that I would make simple paper sketchbook to hold all the drawings, thoughts and notes. I already have a book that I am using as a sketchbook to hold all my ideas on the theme of trees, this was the first time I have used a book to hold just one idea. I have always had a general book of rough ideas, but not one where I am working on one theme alone and in detail.

All my drawings, notes, mark making and ideas are going into the sketchbook, this is a reference for me and shows my journey through my ideas and themes, it isn’t finished and more ideas will be added over time. This is really for me, but I will be using it in class to explain things.

As for the ‘Art’ project for teaching in the summer term, well…. I am thinking a simple Quilted Postcard to explore stitches in terms of mark making and colour then exploring further by making an A4 quilt of a more detailed seascape that they can work over the summer.

And I have ideas for so many seascape themed postcards….

The Clock Is Ticking

10-04-2025

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!!!

Dream Garden

15-03-2025

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.

My dream garden also has a stand of silver birches in a mowed path wild flower meadow!!!

But in reality, I have a small urban garden, to which the sun has finally returned, after the long winter months of the sun not making it in, its arrived, starting with the end and the garage door and slowly creeping and catching the right-hand side. It will eventually in a month or so, catch the back door and kitchen window in the late afternoon. But the left-hand side, along the fence and the corner by the house never gets the sun – its full shade and very damp in the winter months – the moss really loves it!!! As do the snails!!!

So, none of those ‘cottage garden’ plants will grow well in our garden, they don’t like the shade or living in pots. There isn’t the big blousy plants just lots of shades of green and different sizes of leaves and shapes from laurels and euonymus, hostas that the snails love & heuchera with hydrangeas adding colour with their big balls of flowers. In summer I add in pelargoniums that spend the winter in the porch.

I have been tempted by Sarah Raven, and ordered a few things - a hardy geranium that will take the shade and ‘deadnettle’ plus a few more scented pelargoniums…..

I am looking forward to getting back out in the garden, having those few minutes pottering around every morning after breakfast, checking the pots seeing what is growing, connecting with nature…..

Slow Quilts

08-03-2025

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.

You are probably asking what this has to do with slow quilts and Sarah’s just rambling about things….which yes I am, but there is a point. How I used to teach, the hours of development, creating, writing instructions, have a quilt finished and ready to show (in a Blue Peter moment) then demonstrating and making a second version is just not sustainable. It’s not sustainable to do 20 hours, or even 10 hours, of preparation a week for a two-hour class, I just don’t have the time anymore. It’s not sustainable to keep coming up with ideas, or making the amount of quilts. Also there are so many other creative things I want to resume, teaching is only one strand of my creative work.

It’s also I have this huge back catalogue of patterns and designs that I have created over the years that I feel I should use more. And the stage that the class is at, is more about giving ideas than showing techniques, I will always show how things are created as I think it’s very good to remind ourselves of the basics. Quilts are being worked on and other projects are being made and shared amongst the class from other designers, found though social media.

After a term of a quick stitch n’ flip quilt-as-you-go quilt, the next one is a slow quilt, I have no idea how long this quilt will take to make/teach and finish. It’s called ‘A Few of My Favourite Things’ (yes, it’s a song from The Sound of Music!!!) it’s a quilt of lots of different squares and rectangles, in different sizes and I am going to use my favourite designs from my back catalogue for it. It is inspired by all those Sampler and medallion quilts that I love, filled with different techniques, a mixture of hand and machine work. I won’t be showing a new design each week, it will be mixed in with other smaller projects. This is a slow quilt but that is what I need at the moment, no deadlines, no pressure, it will be done when it is done. I guess you could say this quilt is for me, in a selfish way I am making what I want and love in patchwork quilting, I just happen to be teaching it as well.

I really hope that my love of these patterns and designs will inspire my class.

Hand Stitching

08-02-2025

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.

Life is busy, so many things to do so I may only find ten minutes or fifteen in a day, occasionally I have half an hour but I know that each minute I have, each stitch I place is another towards finishing a page and eventually the project. This is a project that I pick up when I can, but I do try to do a bit each day.

The odd thing is that I have noticed a few things with this project.

Firstly - time slows down for the few minutes that I manage to spend hand stitching on this project. Fifteen minutes feels longer, and in a day when the hands of the clock seem to be whizzing round it feels so good to just breathe and stitch, often with a mug of tea to accompany it!!!

Secondly – I stop thinking about all that needs doing and worrying about things, I just think about the stitches.

Thirdly – I feel more connected to the fabric and thread. I feel the needle going in and out, pulling the thread, how the fabric feels. This is something that I don’t get when machine stitching, that connection. With machine stitching the connection is different, it’s with the machine, how that feels and working it to either piece or if quilting to create pattern and texture.

Basically, I think hand stitching is good for me, its relaxing, calming and mediational……

Hello January

25-01-2025

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!!!

Tuesday once I walk home from class, is finishing off any pieces I have been demonstrating and working on bits for future teaching and if I have time then some U.F.O work.
Depending on how long the housework takes on a Wednesday, again whatever time I have is U.F.O stitching. I may only get 15 minutes, or I might get an hour, but they all add up and each stitch is another towards finishing a project. In the past I would get impatient that I haven’t had time to work on a project and annoyed with myself that I have finished it already. I am my own harshest critic……

Thursday is my day!!! My day to work on designs, painting, drawing, stitching, postcards, book ideas, research, whatever I feel I need for my creative journey and my mental wellbeing. Last year, I would regularly lose Thursday to working on teaching pieces or trying to finish a project, and what I wanted to do for me, or for Tortoise Crafts would be lost, patterns wouldn’t be developed for putting on my website or selling on Etsy and as for thinking about a fifth book – no way, not doing another one, I have no ideas!!!

So, Thursday are being ring fenced as they say, my time, for my work.

Friday afternoon is dressmaking time, I might only get an hour or three, it depends on the jobs I have to do round Maurice’s and if I have to do some baking to fill the freezers. This year dressmaking is for Laura. Yes, I have fabric and patterns for me, but I am not in any real need of more clothes so they can wait till I have refreshed Laura’s clothes. Laura has her own style – history bounding it is called, she loves her Edwardian style walking skirts, along with making her another one, I am also making her some blouses and dresses. Much of her working time Laura wears a uniform but when she is doing training then she needs smart clothes and what she has, isn’t smart enough anymore and frankly she hasn’t got much, a few shirts that she bought years ago and one dress I made her last year!!! So, lots planned, things in her style that are made to fit her and are to a nice long length she likes!!! And I realised that I would get more made, doing a bit each week than if I try to find a whole day, one, I struggled to find a whole free day and two, I got bored doing dressmaking all day and made mistakes!!!

My best friend, Rachel goes to dressmaking classes on a Thursday evening, and she got far more made than me last year, because she did it each week and because of this, it gave me the idea to work on the dressmaking every Friday.

Saturday and Sunday I don’t plan, it depends on what is happening, what Tony and I have to do!!! And when its gardening time, I will do that at the weekend!!!

I have reinstated the half hour cross stitch a day as well and managed to stick to it!

And then there is the hour or so I get in the evenings, snuggled in my armchair to stitch, this is the time I have to embroider my postcards, Thursday is proving to be a good time to prepare a number ready for the following weeks or so evenings. Or if I don’t want to do embroidery there is always my Granny square crochet.

Now, this plan is not set in stone, I am not going to stress if other things crop up that are more important, or if one day I want to go out. Laura and I intend to go to an exhibition or museum once a month. I have to be flexible and projects may take a long time but I will finish the U.F.O’s – eventually!!! But where I can I am going to stick to the plan, and so far, these first few weeks of January, it has worked really well, and I have already achieved so a fair bit and feel good about it!!!