About a year ago, I undertook training at Catching Lives to become a mentor for a client who has been accommodated after a period of homelessness. It is part of a pilot project to try to help people make the transition into a more settled way of life. The idea is to help to resolve any difficulties at an early stage. People might need help with budgeting, making links in a new area, cooking a meal – or, unfortunately most commonly, dealing with the Jobcentre when they arbitrarily cut off benefits without any notice.
Mentors work together in pairs, and Paula, with whom I had already been working in the kitchen, and I were jointly nominated to mentor a guy together. We decided to car share on our way to meet him, so I called round at her house and was invited in. Paula lives in a community with a few other religious women, all of whom, I think, used to work as psychotherapists. She showed me round their lovely house.
I was absolutely gobsmacked when I saw the room they have turned into a chapel: an entire wall of the room is made up of the most beautiful stained glass panels, looking out on to the garden. Two of the women in the house designed the windows based on the idea of the sky, the sea and the sand and found craftsmen to work on making their idea a reality. As I looked at it, I started to wonder if I could make anything like it in fabric. I have gone to U3A patchwork classes for years – the teachers are amazing – and I had learned some stained glass techniques in patchwork. What would be new would be trying to use these skills on fine fabric to make what would effectively be a net curtain. I have great reservations about net curtains: they are mostly fairly hideous, but essential in, for example, my caravan, where I do most of my sewing. I remember reading somewhere that more net curtains are sold in Edinburgh per head of population than elsewhere in the world!! What does that say about Edinburgh?
Anyway, once I had the idea, I started experimenting, and ended up last summer spending quite a bit of time on my stained glass curtains. I made one a bit like the stained glass windows, then launched out into “Mockintosh” ones and even made a couple of commissions. I thoroughly enjoyed myself sewing in the wonderful light that comes into the caravan.
I am not going to be doing so much sewing this year: I need to do a bit more cycling and walking instead. However, I thought I would do just one small curtain this week for the window in Jae’s office, to celebrate opening up the caravan again after the winter. I haven’t finished it yet, but this it is so far – showing the 3gkiliclimb.com logo designed for us by daughter/sister/aunt Gwen. Here we come snow capped mountain!
