Finding my home....

This last week has seen our house hit by a tummy buy. It started 2 weeks ago with my eldest son and then hit new highs on Saturday when my youngest son spent the day confined to the sofa with a bowl!

Unluckily it came my way...

It has in fact been a little bit of blessing.

I had spent January feeling incredibly restless.... Not really able to concentrate and get on.... Just drifting from one thing to another and feeling quite annoyed with life!

Kind of wallowing in my own self pity I guess...

But over the last 5 days of being pretty much confined to the house I have found my centre again, despite spending 24 hours not getting out of bed!

Sounds slightly strange right? Let me explain.

I am a creative, I NEED to sew, I NEED to do something visual (slightly strange for a person who has a degree in Astrophysics!) and I had stopped doing that. I spent last term teaching literally everywhere, everyday..... Running from one class to another in a crazy person sort of way!

Giving other people the skills to be creative.

I LOVE giving people those skills, I love watching them bloom - one of my students, who had never been near a sewing machine 18 months ago, is now making a selling her own items! It is great to see people become more confident in groups and within themselves.

But I forgot an important lesson... For ME to be complete I NEED to create!

I forgot to nourish my own creative soul, I forgot how it feels to spend hours creating something from scratch and feel the glow that you get!

Yes, I did work on my City and Guilds, but that is a plunge into the unknown every time I work on the required pieces. That work pushes me beyond my comfort zone, which is great, but also raises my heart beat in anxiety...

Patchwork: cutting and sewing, is where my journey began nearly 20 years ago. It is my creative home, full of warmth and lovely thoughts. That is the place I have rediscovered this week.

It is the centre of my well being....

The next time I feel that this single life with 3 kids and all the other baggage that knocks at my door is too much, you will find me with my sewing machine making patchwork.... I will be regaining my sense of balance so I can face the world without a heavy heart...

My History in Quilts

Yesterday I had a lovely free day to sew - I could have done the housework whilst the boys were are school..... I know that made me laugh too!

So faced with a day at home instead of teaching due to the floods I opted to work on Christmas presents and tidy the studio. One of the quilts that has been sitting on the side half made is this one.

It's name is Pinwheel Perfection and is made using the 1930's reproduction fabric called Chloe's Closet charm squares that I have been hoarding for quite a long time!

It is a present for a friends daughter who I think needs a cuddly quilt to snuggle under whilst she watches TV.

I have posting pictures from Instagram to Twitter for a quite a while, but recently I linked to my personal Facebook account. Which means pictures of the patchwork I have been working on appears on my Facebook page for the first time.

Yesterday I bumped into a friend at the supermarket, who said they loved my recent work. This prompted a response of I have been quilting for a long time you know, it's not a recent thing...

Then I realised that to her it is a recent thing. She hasn't been to my house and had the tour of the 20 quilts that currently reside there, neither have I been sharing photos on Facebook of my work...

It is funny how this complement got me to thinking about the hobby that has been with me for nearly 17 years. A hobby that I now live, sleep and breath - and teach. A fabric obsession that started with one magazine article in Prima magazine all those years ago.

My first ever quilt is sitting on the sofa. It is a king size churn dash design, which is starting to look a bit worn after 17 years of use. The boys now make dens with it or cuddle under it to watch TV.

The whole history of my adult life is right there in the quilts dotted around the house. My first quilt, the quilt made after a relationship split, the pram quilt my middle son had (he wears it as a cape now), the quilt my mum spend her last few day under and the one I made to remember her life...

To anyone who visits, they are just quilts. To me they chart my life from the age of 18 and they each carry a memory, a message and some of them have pain attached to them. They mark important parts of my life.

They are priceless........