Welcome to the Blog…
Stitching my own Book
As promised, a post about my little hand stitched book.
What do books mean to you?
To me a book is something to be treasured. Books have somehow woven themselves into the fabric of my life. As a child with a big imagination, they offered new worlds to explore. Later, in my teens and struggling through years of chronic illness they offered an escape. As time moved on my health returned and I fell in love, books offered new ideas and interests to be explored together, in our first home.
Soon after that was the beginning of 24 years of reading aloud each day, to my children. So many stories shared together, so many precious memories of quiet times, cuddles and laughter, or tears shared in the sad parts.
Favourite books are often quoted throughout the day in our house. Because they have been shared over and over with each child in turn, we all know the words, we can all share the joke. Five children, all very different, with different interests, but books will always be a common ground.
Books, in this house, hold a special place in our hearts.
For some time I have thought about making a book. I made some little concertina books, last year, as momentoes of special days out, in our first year of living in Angus. The more of my children reach adulthood, the more I feel the need to hold on tightly to those memories of the times that we have spent together.
But I wanted to create a stitched book. I don’t have any aspirations to be a writer. I enjoy writing, I enjoy words, but textiles is where I express myself most freely.
So I set about making a hand-stitched, quilted book.
I know some people like to plan things things out meticulously before starting a project like this, but it’s not really my way of doing things. I get a rough idea of how it might work and then I start making. I will undoubtedly meet problems along the way, but that’s how I learn. For me, too much planning in the initial stages can mean that the energy of the project gets lost.
I did go as far as to fold a piece of paper into a book and sketch out the idea for each page.
I have been using up fabrics from past projects and repurposing fabrics from charity shops and the scrap store, for the past few months. This project gave me the opportunity to use up some of the really small pieces!
The threads came from my stash too, except for the deep coral thread, which I found three skeins of, in the local charity shop. That made my day, because I had just run out of that very colour.
I decided to make a panel for each page. It gave me a certain amount of flexibility for the construction stage and meant that if my rather loose plan didn’t work out, all of those hours of stitching wouldn’t be lost.
Once all of the panels were complete, I stitched them onto a quilted backing strip, trimmed the edges and folded the pages to form the book – stitching them along each edge, to secure them.
Now it just needed a cover and one or two extras to make it really special.
I stitched the constructed pages onto an inside cover and added a little pocket, for keeping tiny sea treasures in. Again, this pocket was quilted and fastened with a little paper bead, which I made as part of a basketry project a few months ago.
I turned the edges of the embroidered outer cover and the inner cover, stitching them together as I worked, and added another paper bead as a fastener for the book. I made some linen cordage, which wraps simply around the bead, holding the book closed.
It was really a delight to make, from beginning to end and I was amazed at how easily the construction stage came together.
It feels very precious, which is exactly what I hoped for, and although this one is now in my shop, I am looking forward to making more of these little books, for myself in the future – to remember special events in our family.
Enrol now for my new Online Basketry Course
‘Introduction to
Creative Coil Basketry’
A Great Catch Up
It’s been almost half a year since I last posted here – how did that happen?!
Time flies I guess and I have been very busy, putting my focus on my family, our home and finding a new direction with my work. So it is certainly time that we had a good old catch up and I will fill you in on everything that has been happening in my life, during 2026.
Way back near the start of the year, I made the decision to put my baskets to one side for now. I had been struggling to keep things going with the changes to social media, changes to selling work overseas and not being able to find gallery representation that suited my work.
I applied for a few opportunities at the end of 2025, but when none of them worked out and the bills at home were mounting up, I felt that I had to make a change. It can be incredibly lonely trying to earn a living from things that you make from your heart. As a self-taught, full-time home educating mum, fitting work around my commitments at home, I have found that there is very little help out there, to actually find ways to get your work seen and hopefully find homes for it.
It was a difficult decision in many ways, but one that I had been building up to for months and I know that my baskets will be there waiting for me, whenever I want to pick up where I left off.
At the time, my thoughts were to explore my interests in other areas of textiles and hopefully make some things that would find homes more easily locally, rather than across the globe. Right now, I don’t think that I’ve made a lot of progress there. I think perhaps the trouble is that I like to make things from my heart, like it is a gift to a friend or loved one. So the projects take as long as they take and an enormous amount of time and care is poured into each one. So perhaps teaching will end up being the answer for me, passing on my passion and ideas to help others find the joy in making. Right now, I’m still as clueless as I was at the beginning of the year!
While nothing has changed in that respect, there have been plenty of other changes going on. I have always loved sewing, since very early in childhood, but all of those hours, months and years spent working on my baskets, have given me a new confidence in my abilities to make things with fabric and stitches.
That’s the great thing about working with your hands, the more you make, the more you know how to make! Those skills, the muscle memory, the ability to see something in your mind and turn into an actual thing – it’s all transferrable. So that when you pick up a new craft or revisit an old one, you find that you progress with speed.
I’m really pleased with the pieces that I’ve made so far this year. I’ve been able to explore visual storytelling and making use of repurposed materials and scraps. All things that I was turning my mind towards in my basketry practice, so that for me it seems like a continuous practice rather than a change of direction.
I have made wallhangings, vessels and most recently a little hand-stitched book. I will write up a post on the book later this week, because although it is only small, it turned out to be a pretty big project!
Away from the studio corner, life has been storming along as it always does when you have a busy household!
Two of my Five in the Nest are preparing to leave home, to continue their studies at University; my Father-in-Law is preparing to follow us in moving from Cornwall to the East Coast of Scotland, so that we can be nearby; my oldest is busy working on her own creative practice and teaching kids ceramics; my 16 year old is stretching out childhood as long as she possibly can, but reluctantly turning her thoughts to the future and our sweet little Wren is living her best life, as always!
Matt and I have committed ourselves to paying off the debts from our last move, to put us all in a stronger financial position, because with the world the way it is right now, that seems really important. It’s tricky on a very modest income, but there are always changes that you can make, you just have to look for them, and we have!
Thankfully I reached out for help from my GP, with my health, earlier in the year. I had been quite unwell for some time, but was struggling on, on my own.
The cause of the problem turned out to be Adenomyosis, which had been causing havoc with my monthly cycle and as well as causing me a great deal of pain, had meant that I had become very anaemic.
After months of iron tablets, and doing my own research on diets to help balance my hormones, I feel totally transformed! I am able to go on long walks with my kids again and I am busy working on turning a large part of our garden into a productive food garden – to help with never-ending rise in the cost of living!
If you are struggling with your monthly cycle (or fortnightly, as it was in my case) or with heavy bleeding, I can’t urge you enough to seek help. It isn’t something that you have to just bare and wait for menopause. I waited far too long and I am very grateful to be feeling so much better now.
So that’s the catch up. Life is looking pretty good. It keeps me guessing and just when I think that I can relax a little, something else comes along, that needs puzzling out, but I have my health, I just celebrated 26 years of being married to my best friend and I get to spend my days seeing my children grow and start building their own lives.
Enrol now for my new Online Basketry Course
‘Introduction to
Creative Coil Basketry’
VACMA Bursary Project – Beyond The Playroom
Hello everyone, it has been a while! I have been totally immersed in the wonderful world of fibres and creative exploration for the past few weeks, so I haven’t kept up with my writing (other than scribbles in my notebook about ideas and thoughts).
Just before Christmas I received news that I had been awarded a VACMA bursary, thanks to Creative Scotland and Angus Council.
The bursary was to fund a few weeks developing my creative practice, which is such a wonderful opportunity for any artist or craftsperson!
My project was to focus on elevating jute garden twine, by combining it with other materials, through decoration of the form’s surface. I had already had an idea for a series of baskets that could be threaded onto a central pole, as a sculptural piece, and decided that this would be perfect for this project, as I could explore a different idea on each giant bead.
The idea came from the stacking toys that my children enjoyed so much when they were younger, so I have titled it, Beyond The Playroom.
The jute forms are made with the wrap stitch, which has become such a core element of my work. Each one has a hole, top and bottom, so that it can be threaded onto a pine pole. The jute twine makes them very strong, which was important for a sculptural piece, which could be rearranged. I began with the spherical bead and handprinted a series of canvas circles, which I then cocooned in linen thread. I pinned these circles directly to the surface of the basket, so that I could see where I wanted them all to be secured and then worked a single round of coil which attaches to both the jute form and the cocooned pieces. This round of coil, forms part of the finished design and was also worked in linen thread.
I was really pleased with how this bead came together. It follows on from ideas that started with joining my limpets together a couple of years ago, but working pieces over an inner form like this, gives them much more strength.
For the second giant bead, I decided to cover the surface with handprinted canvas pieces, layering them like feathers.
This also lead directly to the third bead, where I used the same method to attach rows of tassels to the surface. I started making the tassels with the the small ends of thread that had built up during the project to that point – a mix of jute, linen and cotton. In the end I needed so many tassels to complete the work, that I had to cut fresh lengths specifically for that purpose.
But that process made me ask myself the question,
“Couldn’t I be using more repurposed and waste materials in my creative practice?”.
I just love the rich textures of the tassel bead and with both of these layered beads the surface and form of the jute inner, was completely transformed.
I made the form for the final bead early on, working a band of linen coil around the centre, but the final design for this one took a bit more thought. Although I had an idea of how I wanted it to look, I wasn’t quite sure how to achieve that until I had worked through the other parts of the project.
In the end I made eight canvas petals for the top and bottom of the bead and quilted them, before pinning them in place, to the surface of the bead.
It was then a process of carefully working three rounds of coil, which attached to both the canvas and the bead. Although a similar idea to the first bead, it didn’t require the canvas to be cocooned first, and allowed the design to carefully follow the form of the bead.
I completed it by adding a central disc, also worked in linen and at this point realised the need for measuring carefully, when so many elements need to meet up perfectly!
I managed to make the first end work by careful variation of the core fibre thickness, but having learned by my mistakes I had no need to, on the second disc.
This project has given me so many new paths to follow and so many questions to explore. As well as the use of repurposed materials, I am keen to explore visual story telling in future pieces, although I am not yet sure how I will achieve that.
Storytelling has been such a big part of my life, raising five children. I have read aloud to them everyday for the past 24 years! But with my youngest having just turned 8, I know that my talents as a storyteller won’t be needed much longer, and perhaps it is time that I started to tell some stories of my own, through my basketry. Or at the very least, provoke the viewer to ask themselves, what the story behind it might be!
So much to think about, so much to process, but I can’t wait to tidy up my worktable and get on with the next piece.
Many thanks to Creative Scotland and to Angus Council for this opportunity, I think it will have a huge impact on my creative practice, as I move forward.
Enrol now for my new Online Basketry Course
‘Introduction to
Creative Coil Basketry’
Joy in Every Stitch
I have been so absorbed in my work this past couple of weeks, that it has been hard to find the time to share it. I have managed to get my posts out through Instagram, but I have so much to catch up on here, as my hands have been busy and my new collection of pieces is almost complete.
Everything just feels right at the moment – I am living my best fibre artist life! After months of feeling like I have been in some sort of creative tussle, with myself, I have accepted that my soul needs to make things that take as long as they take. There can be no speeding up, or prioritising efficiency – Five in the Nest is not a business, it’s my creative practice, which happens to help pay our bills.
I need to take the time to find joy in every stitch, to make what I need to make, no matter how long it takes, because then it feels natural and everything starts to fall into place.
So what have I been up to?
I have been continuing to combine jute with fine linen thread and hand-printed textiles, to create two baskets and the first of a series of small wall hangings.
November began with me completing the first of the baskets in this collection.
Based around the markings of a beach pebble, printed onto canvas, I set about creating a basket that would feel at once ancient and contemporary.
I chose colours of bronze and gold for the cocooned canvas, with earth colours for the printing. I wanted it to feel like a treasured artefact, which had been incorporated into a basket made of a humble material – the strong and fabulously hairy jute. It rises up above the rim of the basket, like the sun rising over the horizon.
I had to alter the way that I usually join two areas of work for this one, to allow for the difference in yarn size between the linen and jute.
I worked a single round of coil around the cocooned canvas and ran a length of 1 ply through the core of the main basket, where I was going to join it together. In that way I could pick up the 1 ply for the joining stitches and connect to the round of prominent coil on the centrepiece.
I moved straight on to the second basket, which had been coming together in my mind while I worked on the first. I watched an interview with Kay Sekimachi recently, in which she talked about how the next piece started in your mind while you working and so the process never stops, and that is so true!
If you’re not familiar with Kay’s work, do look her up. She has been so influential in the world of fibre arts for so many decades and I only found her work by chance, when looking for a documentary on Ruth Asawa. Both are amazing artists and inspiring women as well.
I began with the base basket for the second piece, because getting the round-bellied form right, was essential to this one.
To work on a form in one simple material is a very special thing, because it allows you to immerse yourself entirely in that shape, as it slowly grows in your hands, so this was something of a treat for me!
Once the basket itself was complete, I printed and stretched five canvas pebbles, which I then cocooned in shades of tarnished and oxidised copper. These were then joined to create a chain that sits perfectly on the widest part of the basket.
This week I have been working on the first of a series of small wallhangings. I will keep adding to this series over the coming months, because I love the idea of having many of these self-framed pieces – each with a different centre and each frame slightly different.
Based on the idea of Ripple (a piece I made a couple of years ago, with a limpet shell in the centre), I began by printing the canvas with a design based on a sea urchin shell, that I found on the shoreline, back in Orkney.
Again, I cocooned the canvas in linen thread, picking out the coppers and golds that I see so often along the coast and in the autumn landscapes here.
Once cocooned, I carried on working, round by round to create the frame.
It sits neatly against a wall, needing only a simple nail fixing. I didn’t bring the curving frame right back to the wall this time, but instead allowed the upper section to protrude slightly, like a sea anemone, anchored to a rock, with its tentacles spread out.
I have just one more to go, in this collection, before I release them into my shop. It will be another small wall hanging. But there will be no stopping, because I already have several pieces in mind, to make in December and of course I must fit in a bit of Christmas gift making too!
I hope that you enjoy my new work as much as I have been enjoying it!
Wherever you are in the world, I hope that November finds you well and enjoying life xx
