When I was a child, I spent a lot of happy hours playing with my friends, twin girls, who had a big sister Doreen.

Doreen was always sketching and painting ballet dancers and ice skaters. I remember being fascinated as I watched her colouring in the folds of the skirts as they whirled round. Always wishing that Doreen would let me have a try with her paint brush.

So, when birthdays and Christmas came around, I would ask for paints, crayons and lovely drawing pads full of clean, crisp white paper.

Alas school never had such a fascination, except of course for art. The final year at school excluded my favourite subject, but I ‘did a deal’ with the teacher, unheard of in those days, and dropped cookery. My family are quick to comment today, that this decision was probably their loss!

But it meant that I could then join another class and paint to my hearts content, in the store cupboard!

I would have liked to have gone on to art school but a job in an engineering drawing office came along and I started work as a tracer, and 10 years later I joined Local Government as a Planning Technician.

I took time out when my two sons came along but my interest in crafts of all kinds continued. Well it kept me away from the housework!

I had joined a pottery evening class when I left school and enjoyed ‘potting’ for many years. I invested in a gas kiln and worked from my studio at home, selling some 'creations' by party plan and giving lots away.

When I later decided to go  back to work, I thought a career change might be a good idea. So travelling around the Midlands for Social Services, I taught various crafts to disabled adults. I made lots of lovely friends while teaching them how to make baskets or to paint with a brush held in their mouth.

It was a chance remark by one of these friends that started me thinking about combining painting with free-machine embroidery.

The first little picture that I made was of a tree and I was, as they say ‘hooked’. That's probably where my plans for Cottonscape began.

Well, here I am, now retired. Still living in Walsall, in the West Midlands, where I grew up, and still painting. Spending more and more time in Cyprus where we have been improving our beautiful old house.