A few years ago I developed a power point presentation for a lecture to a textile group about my textile art, and how it developed with inspirations and influences from the Earth’s surface.   About 70 carefully chosen slides of the quilted and embroidered textile art I’ve been making much of my adult life are in this presentation, A Journey Through Landscape,  and this image (Sunburnt Textures) graced the title page slide:I studied undergraduate geography and some geomorphology, and as a result of marriage to an exploration geologist, I have travelled through, lived in and on a variety of landscapes on several continents.  Colours and textures, shapes and processes of landscape formation all provide inspiration to my designs.   As an adult my personal interests have expanded to include the history I eschewed as a child, and include anthropology, primitive art forms and ancient history.

Looking at the fabric and thread part of my art, I can say that various kinds of embroidery were done by the women in our family, so I began to embroider and stitch decoration on things at a young age.  I came to patchwork later, in my 40s, and though my brief affair with traditional geometric patchwork in the late 80s was an intense one,  and we parted amicably, it left me with several enduring marks I’d call influences rather than scars.   Lines and shapes the basis of cut and pieced fabric known as patchwork –  which is my favourite textile art technique from a wide range of other textile art skills.  As a result, then, I love compositions of line, shape and colour, and love compilations of repeated units known in traditional circles as ‘blocks’ that build up into an overall patchwork design.   I love hand and machine embroidery, and hand and machine quilting.  Well, quilting IS an embroidery technique, anyway.

So you may wonder where all this is  going.  I’ve been doing no actual making for several months while I was recovering from a surgery, and haven’t written in my blog, either: but I have been thinking about it all.  After ten years, I’ve decided it’s time for a major website re-vamp.  I will be altering what is shown and how it is presented.  I want newer work up front or on top however you think about that, with plenty of archives people can explore if they want.  To please those who want good close ups I’ll have some click-throughs for those details that my wonderful photographer Eduardo Baldizan captures so well.  With a wet and windy weekend ahead, I am keen to start work on the revision.

“Simpson Desert Sunset” is about 30cm x 20cm, a freeform bargello needlepoint, highlighted with masses of french knots, dates from approx 1979. The frame is not visible.