Regeneration - new growth, new paths, new adventures

With the longer, sunnier days and the release of my spring dresses, I feel refreshed and ready to regenerate myself for the summer of 2019.

It's been a sad autumn and winter since my mother died but I am getting used to living with the empty space that she used to occupy. Today is my first mother's day without her.

My mother was an incredible woman who taught me pretty much everything I know about everything. Obviously, it was only later in life that I came to appreciate it. I also realise now that not everyone is as lucky as I am in having a mother who was creative, clever, kind, patient, public-spirited, adaptable ... everything anyone could want to be themselves.

Staddon and Pamley are the two sides of my family that influence my creative processes; the art and the engineering, the innovator and the finisher, the trier and the perfectionist. My mother was Staddon; the art, the innovator, the trier.

Mum wished she'd taken art at university instead of sciences. At home, raising her family, she found time to paint as well as sew or knit most of our clothes. Rarely without either a sketchbook, a sewing needle or some knitting, Mum created our whole world.

When clothes became cheaper to buy than make, Mum turned to more artistic creativity like hand embroidery, machine embroidery, lace making, silk painting. The boxes I've taken from her house are full of tools I struggle to find uses for - and scraps of this or that she wanted to make use of. I wonder if my children will say the same of me?

Always, always, always creating, Mum kept trying new ideas and adapting old ones. She made little gifts for her grandchildren and inspired them to explore creativity themselves; one even opened a craft shop because of her!

I loved (love) my mum very, very much and am grateful how, even as her illness took a stronger and stronger hold, she could still show her sense of humour, give good advice and make me feel completely loved.