I am alarmed to see how long it is since I updated these pages, life has flown by and still without internet so I am still counting the minutes, hopefully there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I will soon have a fibre optic connection… watch this space. Except that when they came I discovered that the casing for the wires is blocked so no further forward…. I can’t believe how difficult it is proving to be connected.

Since I last updated I have been busy, I don’t like putting new pieces up before they have been exhibited, I have completed one big one and given up, for the time being, on another as it was not giving the result I wanted, maybe I will pick it up again one day. I have had a fair amount of English teaching and two separate weeks away walking with the local group, I now have a library full of inspirational photographs. One of the club members suggested that I gave a show of my photos but my view is very related to how I could use them as inspiration for stitching, textures, pattern, shape etc. so I don’t think anybody other than me would find them very entertaining.

This is a mix from Italy, the Cinque Terra, Florence and Pisa with not outstanding weather in May

Belle Ile in June and the weather was better but changeable, the scenery was fantastic.

In April there was an exhibition of small works, no more than 40cm square so I joined the group, Gaspart 17, and exhibited some of my journal quilts and Fifteen by Fifteen pieces. It ran for four and a half days and I wasn’t required to be there all the time, this meant that I had the time to visit Pour Fil d’Amour at Nantes for a day and catch up with friends who were also there. The exhibition in La Rochelle was a good networking exercise but there were not many people who visited and very few understood the concept of textile art, I will repeat the exercise however because it is a good, if limited, window.

May saw me spending two days in a lino cutting class down the road in Rochefort, it was designed for graphic artists but was brilliant, it really motivated to do more. I worked on a piece, which is yet to be finished, but it is to produce a work which will be exhibited in September with Gaspart.

I have managed to keep up with Fifteen by Fifteen and my Journal Quilts. For the former I am trying to link the six of this year to the coastline and this region, as for the journal quilts, the first four of the year had to use a sewing technique and were based on inspiration from my Indian travels, the next four have to be made using something other than cotton and are based on photos I took in Israel.

Coast line in winter

Horizons: I must go down to the seas again ( John Masefield) the view across the bay with the weather vane from the Gros Horloge, La Rochelle.

This year is disappearing very fast and I really have not been very productive, I miss having unlimited internet access so that I can listen to BBC all day, having somebody talking to me really motivates me to work, without it I am easily distracted. I still have a, now very overdue, wedding quilt to finish and am working on the next Fifteen by Fifteen and Journal quilts while have just finished a sample quilt for my teaching at the Festival of Quilts at Birmingham in August. This year I am only doing two days because I have been invited to go and teach at the Suzdal Quilt Show in Russia. I was invited at Quilt en Beaujolais (before it became BIAT) some years ago but due to various commitments and the dates of the FOQ this year was the first year that I have been free. It is a great opportunity, and I am looking forward to it. It feels, at last, as if it is really happening now that I have got my visa and my teaching materials are packed and ready to go! I am also taking all Fifteen by Fifteen’s first three months of the year quilts with me to be exhibited.

Last week quite by chance I visited a new place down on the coast, a cabin which belongs to the village, Serge who is running it has chosen some local artists to exhibit their work on the theme of the surroundings and I found myself hanging eight of my pieces of different sizes which is really great. I am also hoping to run some small classes there when I get myself organised.

In September I will be at the EPM in Ste Marie-aux-Mines and again will be teaching a class there. Apart from that I am trying to build a new body of work for next year. My next piece is in the pipeline and is for a Gaspart exhibition in September, the subject is animals and I drew the short straw for an animal starting with an ‘N’, it has been a challenge but …… more in the next update.