creative fridays at salcare

Happy to share I'll be spending Friday mornings in March, April (& 1st May) at Salcare in Heanor, getting creative in the lead up to the Derbyshire Makes Festival 2026 🎉

share the harvest

Was so delighted to stitch this banner as a gift for Thrivemind Village (39 Iron Gate, Derby, DE1 3GA) in celebration of their brilliant COMMUNITY FRIDGE!

I dropped the banner off this week and grabbed tasty apples from the fridge. It's open to everyone and contains locally grown, mostly organic fruit and veg and anyone can share or take food.

The Community Fridge is open Monday, Wednesday, Friday 3-6pm and Saturday 11am-4pm.

Nothing new was purchased to make the banner - it includes pre-loved textiles from my stash and bits and bobs from the Play and Recycling Centre in Derby and Ashgate Hospice charity shop in Heanor. Some of the patterned elements are from my mum's 1970's aprons! Doreen liked a pattern and it was particularly nice to work with these textiles as it would have been her 90th birthday on 13th October this week.

I'm hoping the banner will attract passers-by to step over the threshold of Thrivemind Village and discover all the amazing creative, connected, nurturing things going on while grabbing nutritious food for tea!

dare to dream - heanor library craft group

The Heanor Library craft group embraced Derbyshire Makes Dare to Dream with open arms. Here's a selection of their textile patches in celebration of all that's important to them in Derbyshire - place, industry, heritage and history. 

During my final visit with the group they began to arrange their communal banner - taking up space on the library floor and I loved the relationship between the books and textiles 🙂

Can't wait to see the finished banner! 

Pickaxe and hammer

Millstones

Home

Crich Stand

Museum of Making

dare to dream - heanor sewing group

Fabulous and proud!

It's been a pleasure to spend time in the company of the Heanor Sewing Group who meet on Tuesday mornings at the Infinite Wellbeing Community Centre in Heanor. This is their generous contribution to the Derbyshire Makes Dare to Dream mass participation project.

The group invested many hours into their individual patches, and Allison (3rd from right) arranged the patches into the group banner, hand stitching a ribbon of black roses to complete the work. 

A couple of the group away when this photo was taken, so not everyone is represented here. Well done all!

derbyshire makes - dare to dream

Wow! Was totally blown away by the generosity and care the Heanor Library Craft Group and Sewing Group that meet at Infinite Wellbeing in Heanor have focused into their textile patches for the Derbyshire Makes Dare to Dream project.

The textile pieces have taken hours and hours of work and are a stitched love letter to Derbyshire! The groups are so supportive of each other, sharing ideas, skills and encouragement.

These pieces are being uploaded to the digital loom, which is growing day by day. Check out the link for information on how to submit your own artwork to the loom.

Inspired by the past and looking to the future 💚

cultures of care gathering

A couple of weekends ago I was delighted to travel to Woodhouse Eaves in Leicestershire and attend the Cultures of Care Gathering hosted by artist Ruth Singer.

Cultures of Care is Ruth's ACE funded project. I worked on the Care Collaboration element, alongside Mandeep Dhadialla.

It was so good to reflect upon and revisit what inspired the making of, and experience of wearing my handmade Walking Skirt with attendees. After giving my talk I spent a wonderful hour in the company of lovely humans. Participants bought along a garment and stitched words about walking and shapes representing the landscapes they live in into their clothes.

Image by Ruth Singer

Photo on screen by Clare Logan

do you want to see a fabulous show?

Celebration is showing at the QUAD Gallery in Derby until 29th August 2025!

The exhibition showcases the creative achievements of children and young people from Virtual School and QUAD's Schools in Residence Programme funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation's Arts-Based Learning Fund.  

I was delighted to work with an amazing group of year 3 pupils from Pear Tree Community Junior School! The group created these fabulous 'Semotion' flags, inspired by semaphore: a visual signalling method to convey information at a distance. 

Visitors are invited to select a flag and share their feelings - the semaphore alphabet is displayed and using two flags messages can be spelled out for others to interpret in the gallery. What would you share?

Big thank you to QUAD and Mandy McKirdy, Schools in Residence Producer.

Expressive mark-making on fabric using pencils, fabric pens & paint

Flags expressing feelings

 •confused •happy •fine •joy •proud •disappointed 

•scared •anger •love •jealous •sad •excited

Do you want to see a fabulous show?