When I was a child my Granny made me a beautiful patch work quilt from bits of material she'd saved over the years. Each piece of material had a story. Some pieces we recognized as sun dresses that I had worn, others my Mum recognized as dresses that my Granny had worn.
When Granny came to stay with us at Christmas time she bought us delicious home made flapjacks that she wrapped in the liners from the inside of cereal packets. She then carefully packed them into cereal boxes – to stop them from getting crushed.
Of course Granny was brought up in a time before Tupperware and shrink wrap, she probably didn't know that we were going to fill our lives with plastic. In the 1980’s, when my mum started using cling film, we tried to interest Granny in the convenience of this – but she was having none of it! My sister and I laughed about this and how she seemed to us to be making her life harder. She was resourceful and creative and was mostly doing what alot of woman of her generation were doing - Meticulously sorting and re-using items in order to create something beautiful.
I am thankful that Granny taught me how to sew - not because I am a great seamstress but mainly because I know I can save much loved and useful clothes from the dustbin with a few stiches. She made dresses that would then be turned into aprons and then cleaning cloths, as time would take care of their use. When I was very little, in the early 1970's, I remember my Dad wearing a pair of swimming trunks that Granny had knitted!!
She taught me about the importance of perserverance: That it didn't matter if you had to unpick what you had done - what was important was that the end result was beautiful and in her eyes that meant neat and well executed. Little did I know as a child that some 40 years later I would be taking alot of what she had taught me and re-using it on a daily basis:
One of the many beauties of working with clay is that it can be recycled and reused as long as it hasn't been fired - so if I make a mistake pre-firing, the clay won't be wasted as it can be reclaimed. There are lots of different processes working with clay. I make my own - mixing porcelain clay with old newspapers to make paper porcelain.
The boxes and bubble wrap that I use for packaging have been recycled, either because they have been donated by local traders, or I've bought them from Kite who use recycled materials.
I hope that Granny would have been proud of my recycling efforts.