I exhibited The March For The Alternative at the annual National Festival of Quilts in 2012 at the NEC – my first entry there. This was also my first piece of abstract textile art and means a great deal to me.

It contains so many memories from previous quilts. And many of my friends who had been on the March have all picked out places where they were turned back, and then ‘kettled’ – and where they ended up having a party in Hyde Park.

My debt to the St Ives artist, Roy Ray, is considerable. He was my tutor on the St Ives School of Painting course in 2008 who looked at my art work and said: ‘You are thinking too much’. I understood straightaway. But It took a couple of years before the breakthrough to a greater freedom came in my textile work.

On March 26, 2011, I placed a large black plastic bag of scraps from quilts I had made over many years beside me and sat at the table with the television in view, tuned to the coverage of the March in London. Between 10am and 4 pm, I just cut out and sewed together without any plan, just by instinct for the first time in my life. Roy’s guidance was now active.