Peepo!

It has been a little while, a nice break, a much needed rest, recharging batteries, trying to see the world with fresh eyes.

Having reviewed my blog archives, I notice I have never been a very consistent blogger, and I spent a long while wondering about why. I concluded I have been a little lost since we left France, the purpose of this blog became somewhat skewed, and too, people change, I have changed, and I guess I am not really sure what I want to say anymore, or what is the aim of this here blog.

When I was younger, and studying art, I was expect to record my design process via sketchbooks. I never did like that much, I had it in my head that sketchbooks needed to look a certain way, that one would open them up and ooh and ahh over the contents, I felt that my sketchbooks should impress upon the viewer my skill as an artist. The result of this was that I wasn't so good at maintaining sketchbooks, I would tear pages out because they didn't look right.

I realise now (seeing how many hundreds of posts I have never posted), that I have done a similar thing here, but I realise something else, much more liberating - I realise that the whole purpose of sketchbook is just to record, document, remember, it doesn't have to be perfect, and I guess this blog is the same.

I don't have to spend hours planning posts, editing photos, worrying about how it will be perceived or what not. I don't have to do much more than just be here, to record, document and remember.... and above else, to be true to ones self.

I was fortunate enough to receive a bursary (scholarship) to study design and embroidery, so I will be sharing my course progress here, amongst many things, whatever things, just stuff, just keep going... that's what I intend to do. Keep swimming...

Going with the flow of change

The rainbow woven cloth just wasn't doing it for me, I also decided it was too small. So I began working on another woven cloth, this time about 20" square and using only white fabrics, in the hope it could act as a nice clean backdrop for appliques made from the first cloth.

I don't have a lot of pale fabrics so I had to attack some bed linen. I have to say the texture of used fabrics is much more pleasing when woven than the new fabrics I used on the rainbow cloth, I thought I would feel a bit twitchy about the frays and wayward threads, but I actually quite like it, the texture is lovely and soft, it feels nice to hold it and I am enjoying stitching it.

Last night I attached the first applique made from the rainbow cloth. I knew as soon as I decided I would make a large applique from this cloth that is had to be a butterfly. Butterflies are the symbol of change, and so it seems rather fitting to me right now, on a personal and circumstantial level at least, change is always afoot, but never more so than now.



The body of the butterfly is embroidered in a haphazard short and long stitch and then I used a metallic thread which I actually weaved through the embroidery. I have also used silver thread here and there.



Check out my Flickr to see the photos in larger size.

I am still working on this applique, but may move on and add more to the cloth and come back to the butterfly later, sometimes it helps to see it with a fresh eye.
I am becoming a bit obsessive about this project, it is a combination of the stitching being a real tonic and the creative possibilities.
I am thinking I might make one of these cloths every month, and stitch them together to form a quilt at the end of the year... kind of like a stitched diary or journal... I just might.

A Brave Start

Somewhere between Christmas and New Year, I spent a whole evening, some seven hours or so and well into the early hours, getting rather tipsy with my sister Sophie. All the while, I cut and arranged what seemed to be a million and one pieces of my vintage scraps.
Sophie helped me arrange them into strips (this part was lots of fun actually and we were quite impressed with the overall impression when they were all lined up), and then I sewed until I could no longer keep my eyes open.



In hindsight, working whilst A/ quite pissed and B/ dog tired, was perhaps not the best move, my long strips are seriously wonky. I seem to be using that word a lot lately, le sigh.
Anyhow, yes the strips are for a quilt. Which I have rather bravely embarked upon prior to reading about how to actually make a quilt. After all this effort, and the resulting strips, I am now absolutely terrified of stitching them together length ways lest they end up even more wonky, and then there is sashing, batting, backing, quilting and binding and oh, I really have no clue how this is going to end up.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, I will let you know how I get on, though for the time being, the strips are slung over a chair whilst I muster some dutch courage to proceed.



Wish me luck.... you know I will bloody well need it!

A Home in France....

In my 28 years I have had over 31 addresses, starting in Manchester - England, later in Spain, and then most of my adult life in the south of England.
My parents never owned a house while I was growing up, and so we moved from one rented house to another, rarely staying anywhere for longer than 12 months.

When people ask me where I am from, I have never quite known how to respond.
Do I say Manchester? The place where I was born, but haven't lived since I was 4 and remember only vaguely... Do I say where I live now? Even though it may have only been my address for a few months... That one simple question has always filled me with dread, because there was never one simple answer.

In a nutshell, I have always longed for a place called home.
What is home? There is an old saying, "A house is made of walls and beams, Home is made of love and dreams".
I have lived in many houses made of walls and beams, but until now, I have never had a home.

For years I dreamed of returning to Spain, it is a country I know well, having grown up and attended school there, I speak the language, also, I didn't want any old home, I wanted a vista, I wanted space, fresh air and country living.

I dreamed of skipping out of my back door, and straight over the fence on to the back of my very own Horse, that was grazing right there, in my very own field. I dreamed of growing fruit and vegetables and turning out endless rounds of sticky chocolate cake and biscuits from the oven of my very own country kitchen, to be devoured by my hungry children, drunk on fresh air and the smell of wild flowers.

This dream was well beyond our means in England, it was, and still is, beyond the means of most average folk, land is not cheap and nice houses even less so. Our pretty decent wage extended to an ugly flat roofed 70's built house in dreaded suburbia, with a small garden overlooked on two sides by our neighbours. To add insult to injury, this horrid little house cost and arm and a leg, 25 miles from central London brings with it a hefty premium, life was one endless round of work, cook, clean, sleep, to pay a huge mortgage on a house we hated.

People say that the British live to work, the French say that they work to live, this is the kind of life I aspired to. To be something more than a worker, cleaner and cook. To have the time to laugh with and enjoy my family, to have the time to indulge my creativity or just read a book, all of these simple things had eluded me for too long, I was sick with longing for them.

Simon, my boyfriend, didn't share my dreams of upping sticks and moving abroad. He liked town life, more so he liked being close to his friends and family. After much battling we eventually reached a compromise, we would buy a holiday home, in France, and we would have the best of both worlds.....
A house in England, where we could earn a decent living, and a retreat in France, where we could enjoy country living, even if only for a few short days at a time.
Property prices in Spain had spiraled out of our reach and France was closer to England, and thus seemed to be a happy compromise, we could afford a quaint country home with land, and Simon, a keen angler, wanted his own lake, so the search began.

Finding a house (that we both liked) with a lake (that met Simon's requirements) turned out to be no easy task. If you want to buy a nice house in France, you are spoiled for choice, but if you want a house with a lake, your choices are much more limited.
We scoured the internet for months, until eventually, we found two, within reasonable distance of one another, so we could kill two birds with one stone and view both in the same weekend.

The first house, my choice, was a vast farmhouse with cheery blue shutters, ancient oak beams and a small 1 acre lake with a gite beside it. French Estate Agent's are very good at presenting you photos of a property that cleverly conceal all of the less appealing features, in this case, masses of ugly industrial buildings surrounding the barren gardens, and a lake that resembled a cess pit, and showed no signs of fish life.

The second house was Simon's choice, and I had already dismissed it in my mind as being too small, it was a 2 bedroom lodge beside a lake with a few acres of land. I was dreaming of a vast country home with large rooms and enough space to accommodate visitors, this house did not tick many boxes, but we went along anyway.

I have heard many people talking about how they found their homes, and how when they first saw it they knew it was "the one", the same way people speak about eyes meeting across a crowded room, but until then, I had never known that I could fall so deeply in love with a house.

La Poiteviniere is located on a quiet lane a few kilometres from the nearest village, a pretty white house, set before a sparkling lake, surrounded by lush green fields, and it's very own fruit orchard and small woodland. We had to have it.
Sitting here now, it is impossible for me to imagine another place where nature stands with both her hands so full of gifts, it still never fails to make me catch my breath and bring a lump to my throat.

We loved coming here so much, but holiday's were not enough, we had to be here, and so in August 2007, we did it, we moved to France.

So this is my story, I have a home made of love and dreams.
I decided to set up this blog to record my my time here, tales of my French country life, and there is no better time to start...

Happy New Year :)