After many years of teaching as a peripatetic Senior Teacher of Support for Learning in Perth and Kinross, I retired in Summer 2000.  At that time I was looking for a new challenge, so in the Autumn I joined a small class to learn the basics in patchwork and quilting. A few months later my teacher gave up the class and suggested that I might like to  join a  class at ‘Purely Patchwork’ in Linlithgow, where I could learn machine quilting as well as other patchwork and quilting  techniques..

I made my first piece of Sashiko work there in 2001, followed by being taught new patchwork patterns and machine quilting to produce colourful pieces of work. Around this time I met Pat Archibald, a partner in the business, and joined her Design Class which was stimulating and challenging and exactly what I had been looking for.

Each term, as a group, Pat encouraged us  to work on a different topic which led to our  entering a juried exhibition at the Loch Lomond Quilt Show for the first time in 2005.  The following year each person in the group produced a piece of work based on a verse of a poem by George McKay Brown and in 2006/7 these were displayed at Quilt Exhibitions throughout Scotland and England..

As a result of our hard work over the years, Pat suggested that we should form our own group.  As a bond had been made among the members of the group, it was decided to go ahead  with this suggestion and so ‘Freewheeling’ was formed and our own exhibitions followed.