I started a one day a week for ten weeks textiles course at Carseldine QUT in 1990. I started that not really knowing what it was going to be about, but I really loved it. I found that it was something that I would really love to work in. When I moved back up to Gladstone my children were little, I was more involved with them and school and there wasn't much happening here in the textile area. I did bits and pieces by myself. Gradually it developed with different tutors that eventually came to Gladstone. Ruth Osborne was one, she started coming to Margarita's Patch – the craft shop in Gladstone, and I started doing workshops with her. I came across Flying Arts through the craft shop's newsletter to club members.

My work has always been a hobby but I know it is something that you can make a profession of. Tutors lecture, they travel, they sell their own work. I have started doing a bit more with it and I'm finding my feet. I have started doing the silk painting and I have had a solo exhibition with that. I had nine framed pieces and unframed pieces on foamcore and then I had silk scarves and ties and rice bags out of silk and then the QCL ‘DNA Foundations of Life' piece.

I would like to do more in the textile area. The work probably takes longer than the painting, it is a bit more involved because of the sewing.

The Flying Arts workshop, ‘Wearable Art' with Wendy Wright was something I wanted to do. I knew about her from articles in sewing magazines. That was in 1999 and it was held at Magarita's Patch. I wanted to improve my technical skills. I had done a bit of free machining and solveig work (which is the soluble plastic) but I wanted to extend my knowledge and learn new things. I am looking forward to the Flying Arts workshop coming up with BJ Adams in October. I am really interested to see what her work is like. She is coming from America to the textile workshop that is being held in Australia. Flying Arts was able to get her to take a workshop, so we are very lucky.

I did another workshop with Wendy called ‘Discharge Dying' which I found very interesting. I haven't gone into the discharge dying myself because you need lots of bits and pieces and it involves strongish chemicals that you really need to wear a mask for. Different techniques and the possibility of doing that are interesting. A group of us have got together to possibility extend from that workshop and take it further. The workshops, and meeting the other people, allows you to see the different ways people go about doing things. You all come out with something individual. The ideas in the workshop can stimulate you at the time but they also give you ideas for future projects.

When I went to the second Wendy Wright workshop I heard about the QCL art award and that we could enter this. The theme for this was ‘Foundations'. I sent in a proposal which was accepted and then I had to finish it. I think there were 25 accepted from the different art forms. I didn't really know what I was going to do but I thought about including a foundation garment. I didn't know that that I could make a foundation garment so I bought a torsellete and then pulled it apart and worked on it. I dyed it and I remade the panels and worked it with flowers and fish and butterflies – things that I think of as life. Then over the top of that I did the double helix strand of DNA and I called the piece ‘DNA – foundations of life'.