Evelyn Ramsay

I am always filling notebooks with ideas; photographs; pictures from magazines I have liked; shadows; colours; landscapes; the sea; gardens; and buildings like the gentleman's toilets in Blackford Highland Games Park - a rusty old building falling apart with beautiful glimpses of the landscape in between the gaps. The rusty corrugated iron falling off the rotting railway sleeper uprights, differing textures all begging to be photographed and turned into a piece of art, if not four.

Or the notice board at the Pathology Department of Glasgow Vet School, where a photo of a diseased liver inspired me to do two years work. Red and purple pinks holey and lacey just begging me to try to make textiles from the organic shapes.

Spilt dyes mopped up with paper and then printed onto fabric immediately bringing back long forgotten memories of picking poppies in the cornfields of my childhood and my mother saying "don't pick the poppies" because I used to make patterns on my cotton dresses with the sap from the ends of the stalks, this when dried left permanent brown dots - my first attempts at printing. As the eldest of six girls my dresses had to be handed down so I was not popular with my five younger sisters.

My work always starts with white natural fabrics, cotton, silk, linen, dyed in large batches using red, blue and yellow procion dyes to produce all the colours of the rainbow. Sometimes I double dye with black and fuchsia for brights and muted colours. Inspiration comes from organic shapes of the dyes on the fabrics. While ironing the ideas just come out. I also use thickened dyes to paint whole cloth quilts and pieces of art.

I work with disperse dyes on synthetic fabric which allows me to make repeat patterns and to use various organic forms as masks, even finding inspiration from spilt dyes which was the catalyst for my prize winning poppy quilt.

I am inspired by art, and have tried over the years to develop a more textural form of quilting, adding small pieces of my fantasy fabric to the final pieces of work.

I have always been influenced by antique tapestries; favourite artists work; long forgotten memories; the garden; the sea; local and international events - anything really.

I would describe my work as a blend of textile art, some quilting, lots of free machine embroidery; hand dyed and painted texturised art.