So, the year has started and it is already March. I wonder if  your year is shaping up to be your 'best yet' or not.

Well for me it has certainly not been my 'best yet'. With the return of cancer - secondaries from the breast cancer 13 years ago, it is all looking very different to what I pictured. I guess life is like that.

So, for me at this moment I am having radium treatment, everyday for 10 days. They are concentrating that in the neck area, because for the last 2 1/2 months I have little use of my right hand - we are all praying that this treatment will give me my hand back. I am right handed by the way. Not looking good you might say!!

Well, somehow in the middle of this I have had to try to keep myself sane. I was given the opportunity to participate in a fibre art challenge with Bernina, connected to the launch of the new Series 8 machine. Wow, what a machine.

In thinking what sort of thing I could do, bearing in mind that it could not be anything too precise in the actual making, cause of 'the hand', I set about doing  design of laying fabric down and then free machining over the top. The design had to include this particular '8' number, so I decided to machine felt that '8' over the top of the layered background, and  by doing this I could push the work under the machine using the left hand and the  pinky finger side of my right hand.

I then left the top of the '8' open so that 3D flowers and leaves, representing the ultimate and perfect in Gods creativity, could spill out uncontained from the '8'. Thus my title - 'Series 8 - Uncontainable Creativity'

Well it took me half of Dec, all of Jan and half of Feb, but I got it done. And to my delight, it was hanging in the Bernina stand, along with some others, at the Melbourne Quilt Symposium last week.

So everyone, I just want to encourage you. There was a lot of pain happening while i was doing this, and it took a lot longer than it could have as I could only do it in half hour or hour shifts, and sometimes only once a day, but it certainly gave me a goal in the midst of coming to terms with what is going on in this mortal body of mine.

My fight is a lot bigger this time than it was last time, but me and God go along well together and we will beat this thing, and meanwhile I will see you at the Gold Coast  Craft Show at the end of March - come and do a fun Bernina workshop with me! Bless you.