Jessica Ormerod

Just in time for the weekend @cuttsandsons 🎉🎉🎉🎉🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

Here I am with my trusty steed that gets me around and about Oxford. It has a certain clacking noise that I worry about but I try to ignore as I hurtle into town to run my quilting workshops at @tapsocialmarkettap . I’m really enjoying teaching and sharing skills with some wonderful fellow Oxford peeps. And my beautiful assistant comes along to help me pack up and accompany me and the wheezy bike home again. I have tons of workshops coming up. You can follow @togetherwemake_ox to keep fully abreast of hot quilt dates.

THIS THURSDAY [14.05.26 - 6-8pm] !!🙇‍♀️ Get yourself down to the @tapsocialmarkettap for a wholesome time at the Quilting Social, led by local legend @theconstantthreader 🫡🌸💅 In this workshop you’ll be taken through creating your own small, improvisational quilt using traditional hand-stitching methods. No experience is necessary - just bring your lovely selves! All materials provided.🧵🪡 Tickets linked in our bio - can’t wait to see you there 🩷 #oxfordartevents #oxfordcreativesocial #sewingclassoxford #quiltingclassoxford #quiltingworkshopoxford

Four years ago my dad died. I felt like I had been run over by a train. A very old friend reassured me that’s it’s perfectly normal to go completely mad for a minimum of two years after a big bereavement. In my head I doubled that time because there was an awful lot more going on in our family that needed sorting out. Four years on and I finally feel like I am through the madness. I’m living in a new city, near my mum, brother and sister, near very old friends and making many more. I loved London but I was more than ready to leave. I’ve kept up with my amazing friends there including luring some of them Westwards too. My girls are happy and healthy. My mum is safely installed in her new house. My husband of dreams is slowly finding his running tracks and hills to cycle up in TellyTubby land. And I have found myself again after many, many years caring for other people. I can’t believe how much time I have for myself to think about, make and share my creative process. I walk my dog across beautiful fields, I go out to gigs and only have a five minute journey home, I have cups of tea, bottles of wine, trips to London and pretty much no worries. Long may this last. No one is allowed to get ill or die. So this is a message to you all on my 48th birthday, STAY WELL AND BE HAPPY however that may be!

Hello & welcome to May @ TWM!🌸 We hope you’re all well and looking forward the awesome creative events we have lined up for you this month. We’re really excited to share that this month is a busy one for us - we have not one, not two, not three, but FIVE events planned this month - there really is something there for all of you lovely crafters!! If you’d like to join us at one or more of our May events, there’s a link to tickets in our bio 🎟️ get them soon as they’re selling fast!! Can’t wait to see you there xx #oxfordartevents #oxfordartsocial #creativesocialoxford #togetherwemakeoxford #artistcommunity

Made a new friend at the Museum of English Rural Life where I visited yesterday on my Quilt Club school trip. We had a fantastic tour of the Museum which is quite hilarious in its collections - if you are interested in the history of shepherds’ crooks this is the place for you. We were really there for the incredible collection of quilts in their archive. I could have spent several more hours looking at the whole cloth quilts which are utterly beautiful and made on a similar frame to my own. There are examples of Victorian log cabins, paper piecing and a worshipful sampler in red and white. Ollie, the Head of Collections, was really generous with his time and expertise. Anyone can book to see objects in the archive or use the reading room which also has an extensive collection of research papers and books. MERL is a lovely, warm and thoughtful place, it’s free to enter. It has a gorgeous cafe. And a wide range of ploughs. What more could you want from a Museum of Rural Life?

Go out (or order online) this absolutely fantastic book. I read it in 48 hours because I couldn’t put it down and it’s so brilliantly written. Shahed Ezaydi discusses themes of racism, endemic and institutionalised islamaphobia that we have in this country and globally. Every day I watch and listen to the news and see a tidal wave of white supremacy and nationalism. Muslim people are blamed, attacked, isolated, arrested, targeted, marginalised, expatriated, fetishised, raped, murdered and often these crimes go unreported. Prevent is a state weapon that is used to harm Muslim people through ungrounded insinuation that they are preternaturally prone to violence. It is embedded in every single institution in the country and it is almost totally unquestioned. In fact last week it was suggested that it doesn’t go far enough. It is a pernicious policy that should be stopped. I could go on about Shamima Begum, the travesty of the Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham, Far Right abuse of mosques and the general dehumanisation of Muslim people that is a normal part of political, journalistic and everyday rhetoric. But I won’t because what you should do is buy this book.

So amazing working with the best women (and one rather nice man) evaaaarrr putting up our exhibition. Come along and see lots of art, have a glass of wine and some dim sum. We’re there until the end of July. @grandcruoxford North Parade

A collection of work by Rebecca Howard, Susannah Cartwright, Amy Walsh, Flora Whiteley and Jessica Ormerod at Grand Cru, North Parade, Oxford. May - July. Come along for a glass of wine, oysters and art.

Yesterday I spent the whole day in the print studio making trace mono prints. I did loads of prints of women I love including my beautiful daughters, Angela Carter, Lisa Power, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. I also made two prints of my old school friend Scroggie who died three years ago and of my old gang from sixth form. When I started research for my Final Major Project I thought it would be about other people. In the end I find that it’s been about my own life. The research into the women’s movement of the 70s and 80s has given me a context for telling my own stories of my childhood, teenage years, becoming and being a woman. I loved my years in London. I have the best friends there, my girls are true Londoners and my husband definitely yearns for the bright lights and buzz of the City. But I am so totally overjoyed to be back in my home city. I love jumping on my bike and cycling up the hill, crossing South Park and heading to the beautiful arboretum that shelters Brooke’s art school. I pinch myself every day to check it’s real. My final project for Art Foundation has pushed me to try new ideas, techniques, media. It’s also challenged me to think about who I am and how I became the woman I am today. It’s been hard but it’s been life changing in the best way. Now I just need to find my degree certificate to submit it for my MFA. I think I hid it in a box somewhere….

A really lovely workshop around the frame at AAJA this afternoon. In the end I had to pack away with people still sewing to get back to Oxford before midnight. I’ve promised to hold another workshop before too long for people to get back to their designs. I’m so happy that everyone enjoyed it so much. It was absolutely fantastic to be back in my ends round the corner from my old studio in Deptford. A fab weekend full of art, culture, friends, 50th birthday parties and reading the paper in the park. Happiness! 💕💕💕💕