How plans change! I vowed to be better at keeping this up to date but life got in the way! I went to Israel in February and while I was there I negotiated the sale of my house, since then day to day life, and the organisation of it, took over. I had a big exhibition at the Biennial Art Textile (BIAT) show in Villefranche sur Soane in April and then six days later I moved to the opposite side of France in to a temporary rental house. Once here I had to find a permanent home, that is now found and I will move definitively in mid-August. Needless to say that creativity has been on the back burner. I am now vowing to do better.

The visit to Israel was wonderful and I returned home with plenty of ideas for future textile work, I also taught lino cutting to a small class .

Inspiration from nature,

monuments

desert landscapes,

sculptures,

churches,

ruins

the Dead Sea

and market stalls.

Back home it was non-stop stitching to finish everything for BIAT, as the work was virtually all new I didn’t want to post anything until the show was over. The work in the exhibition was inspired by my travels in India.

I also taught a couple of workshops and had a piece in the event’s competition.

Since I have moved I have found it difficult to settle down to stitch, now I am getting back to textile work and the ideas are beginning to flow again. The change in the landscape is radical and there are so many ideas that I want to explore.

I have kept up to date with my journal quilts, this year working in pairs of positive and negative so at the end of the year there will be six pairs.

Fifteen by Fifteen started the year with reflections, then we started a series of three the first two have been completed the first was to be black and white, the second abstract and the third will be complimentary colours.

The Port of Minimes, La Rochelle in the early evening

The inspiration for the series is a poem written by Pavel Friedman (born 7/01/1921 in Prague – died 29/09/1944 in Auschwitz) dated June 4th 1942 entitled the Butterfly, which has the line “Only I never saw another butterfly”….