Ann Fahy, quilt artist
I've been quilting since the late 1970s. I'm originally a doctor; I moved to Galway with my husband from Dublin in 1975. My three children were in school, and there was no such thing as part-time work for married women at that time. Other people might have cleaned the house, but I took classes in patchwork and quilting. To begin with I liked the geometry of it. I'd always been interested in handiwork. I would knit and sew things. It relaxed me, and I could express myself outside of the world of medicine. I was working as an anaesthetist before I got married.
Soon I started making designs and leaving behind the traditional geometry. It might be a bit grand to call it art. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that description.
I don't often make quilts for use now. I mostly make them to be used as wall hangings. It's not realism in any way. It would be more abstract. The landscape inspires me all the time, both the Burren and Connemara, and I'm also inspired politically by the idea of the destruction of the landscape.
I remember there was a fantastic interest in quilting in the early 1980s, and then it dropped off and people did step-aerobics classes instead. I still belong to the Irish Patchwork Society. Now we have a lot of new members, and I think they're younger. It's something that people can learn, like I did, when they have young children.
My piece in this quilt-art exhibition is a large panel made up of 12 individual panels. It's called Continuum. The idea is that it could be the seasons or the colours of different times of the year - a colour for each month, even. I use texture and colour by pleating and then dyeing the material. I like to feel I've done the whole thing. I've produced my own colours from something that was a blank white canvas at the start. I use linen mainly, and sometimes silk. This piece took about two to three months.
When I'm into a piece I kind of resent having to come up and cook dinner. I call it an obsession, really. A hobby has the feeling about it that it's not serious, but I'm very serious about it, although I'm not making a living out of it. In conversation with Catherine Cleary. Photograph: Joe O'Shaughnessy
• Quilt Art 20 is at the National Craft Gallery, Castle Yard, Kilkenny, until July 15th. See www.quiltart.org.uk