Having started July juggling exhibitions the rest of the month was relatively calm and not very summery, high winds and heavy rain showers, but it meant that there has been plenty to do in the garden.

At Marans I showed some new and some older pieces, I had two square metres of display space.

Then in La Rochelle it was an exhibition of small pieces so I exhibited last year’s Fifteen by Fifteen pieces and some which were smaller and had been made for the monthly SAQA Europe and Middle East gallery, these four pieces are mounted on frames and I added two journal quilts.

I didn’t spend a lot of time at any one of these exhibitions as they were all running at the same time but I did have enough time to appreciate the comments from the visitors. There were not over many visitors at any of the exhibitions, the weather was far from seasonal which didn’t help.

As a result of my exhibition at Ste Marie de Rè I was invited to hang my work at a hotel/spa just outside the town. I don’t know what will come out of it but I am happy that the work is hanging rather than sitting under my bed! There is a long corridor linking the two areas and I have 19 pieces decorating it.

I am gearing up for EPM, Ste Marie-aux-Mines in mid-September and then at the end of the month I have two classes at Pour l’Amour du Fil in Nantes which are already fully booked. I am just keeping my fingers crossed that everything will go head.

The last piece for Fifteen by Fifteen has been completed, the subject was architecture. In the Chitral valleys in the north west of Pakistan the houses are a built on steep land leaving the valleys for agriculture. As a result the houses are all on top of each other, one person’s roof becomes another’s terrace, they are built in wood and stone with some mud. I used a dyed cotton/silk mix as the upper cloth which has a texture and then after hand stitching it I cut back to the landscape that I had roughly painted on the background. I didn’t put much detail in to the background as I wanted to put the emphasis on the architectural content.

Now I am hoping to finally getting around having time to play with some new ideas that have been turning in my head for some time and allegedly summery weather is coming!