Seasonal Change

Well, now that I've knitted myself a new scarf - from hand-spun, hand-dyed silk-alpaca, bought-at-a-local-craft-market yarn - I'm ready for winter. (I improvised a bias-knit in alternating rows of garter and stockinette stitch, and it's super-snuggly.)

There has been so much colour from my garden, I feel ready for grey skies and warm clothes and time spent indoors. To everything, there is a season, and all that.

And I'm just back from the awe-inspiring colour-fest that is Grampians Texture, where I was lucky enough to be a tutor for a week.

Bryant Holsenbeck's workshops produced the most delightful critters made of recycled textiles.

Jan Clark's group made all manner of colourful marks on textiles...

Nicola Henley had them all printing up a riot of colour and texture. 

...and I had my group making patterns and toiles (muslins) in very boring colours, indeed... but they learned a lot about garment construction and alterations to patterns... 

If they wanted colour, they only needed to step into the Market Hall.

Or step outside the classroom. 

These fellas knew what time lunch was served. 

This was the foggy morning scene that greeted me before class one morning. It felt autumnal. (And full of kangaroos.)

And so, the seasons roll on, and I seem to have been busier than ever lately.... although there is little to show for it. But I feel that a cog has shifted, and it's time to move forward again....assess where I've been and where I'm going.

I've been working on uploading my paper pattern range as pdf downloads on my website lately. There's a way to go with the back catalogue, but I've started with the garment patterns. It's a long and tedious process, but I think it's worth doing.

I've been working on edits for the new book, which is due out at the end of this year. It was written throughout a difficult, grief-filled 2016, and I hope that finishing it will feel like the closing of some sort of door, and maybe even feel like some sort of triumph. It's also a shift in direction for me, and I hope that it will hit the mark with the sewing community. This is the anxious too-late-to-turn-back-now stage of book-writing, that always fills me with self-doubt. But yeah... the book is on the way.

I've developed new teaching resources that are all about garments and have been thinking about new workshops.


I've opened a new Instagram account, which is more about sewing and textiles (and less about my home and garden, as my personal account is), which will be a new focus.

And I've started planning some new patterns... For the first time in too many years. I think it's time.

May the turn of the seasons bring wonderful things your way.