Juliette Orton

I had a lovely evening at Chiltern Embroidery and Textile Group in Tylers Green earlier in the week, it was good to be back there after giving my own talk back in March. I took my Mum and a friend to see a talk given by Wendy Dolan on 'Art, Architecture and Stitch' which was right up my street! Wendy is a textile artist who uses fabrics and threads to create textured designs with some wonderful results. I have met Wendy several times before as she is from Sussex (where I grew up) and we also have some mutual friends.   Wendy's talk covered how she develops her work from sketchbooks through to her final designs and she showed us photographs that had inspired her from a variety of places such as Barcelona and Venice. My work is also very sketchbook led so I could easily identify with her thought process. I am also drawn to textures but Wendy's work differs from mine in that she starts with plain coloured fabrics, stitch and thread - ...

I've recently discovered that I haven't written a blog post since last July, shocking! The truth is that I've had a pretty bumpy ride recently and I haven't been sure whether to talk about it on social media or keep it to myself and carry on (thinking that no-one will be any the wiser and that wouldn't be such a bad thing would it?).      The problem is, being a 'Creative' my feelings and thoughts go hand in hand with my work and it is not so easy to compartmentalise these things. I think I need to start being a bit more honest with myself about how events have affected me though so that I can grow stronger and move on in a positive way.  I hope that putting this out there in the ether will help me to stop worrying about telling people and whether they think any less of me as a result, it is what it is. This is now sounding overly dramatic and I apologise as it is just related to my health issues.      To sum up: I have had Rheumatoid Arthriti...