About

I'm Rachel. I am 50, a mother of 3 (now grown-up) children, a wife, and a devoted follower of Jesus.

Myrtle's Purple Turtle is my brain child. At some point in the future, my hope is that it will be the brand name for a small clothing collection, but for now it's the blanket name I'm using for all my creative endeavours.

My background is in art and textiles, though I never worked in that field, I have kept my hand in through my hobbies.

I've been looking at what comes next for me, now my last "bambino" is off to Uni. I've been considering what will be my second act, so to speak. So for the moment, this space is where I document my creative experiments.

Why Myrtles Purple Turtle? The name came from two things. One time, when teaching my kids about poetry and rhyme (I homeschooled my brood), we were deciding what might rhyme with "purple" — hence the string of words "Myrtle's Purple Turtle." Perhaps not the best or most true rhyme, but it kinda works, enough for me anyway.

Also, I had a great Auntie whose name was Myrtle. She always made her own clothes and had wanted to be an actress; she was creative and flamboyant. I was quickly identified by my family as most like this great Aunt, as I was a little out of kilter with 3 boisterous brothers and a mum more at home with cement than PVA glue.

However, in his retirement my Dad took up painting, and my mum has always been a knitter and sewer, and she taught me both — though I suspect it's the practical and construction side of those things, rather than the aesthetics, that appeals to my mum.

I was unwell for a time and unable to do many of the things I love. In coming back to a measure of health, I have been doing all the things I love, and when I returned to drawing and painting I found I have an ease that wasn't there before.

Although textiles and clothing is my first passion, I have just been allowing a creative process to work itself out, almost as if the ideas have a life of their own.

I had one or two practical things that I used as access points to be able to start getting back into these things: 1) I wanted to be able to give my friends cards, and 2) I wanted a birthday calendar. And things have snowballed from there.