“My mother was a dressmaker and it is from her that I get my love of ‘fancy work’,” she said.

She kept her enthusiasm up as a school girl but had to tone it down in her working years due to lack of spare time, but got going again when she retired.

“I love red work (stitching with red thread), cross stitching, silk ribbons and incorporating embroidery with quilting,” she said.

“It is relaxing and the end result is rewarding.

“I’m not an accomplished embroiderer, but I love it.”

There’s nothing a hobbyist loves more than like-minded company, and Mrs Dawson has plenty of that at the Bodalla Embroiderers, which she has been a part of since 1997.

Mrs Dawson believes her talents are in administration rather than the stitch work itself, but that didn’t stop her winning the group’s Anzac Day challenge, with a Flanders poppy creation which featured a poem written in 1915.

It beat 29 other works.

“For me the icing on the cake was winning the Liz Robinson Memorial Award, which honours the founder of the group, in 2013,” she said.

Mrs Dawson’s love of stitching took her into the woods, so to speak, in the early 1980s.

“My sister got me to make a teddy bear, and I intended only to make one, but I got hooked,” she said.

She has since held teddy bear workshops in Moruya and won many prizes for her bears at the Eurobodalla Show, as well as judging in the category.

Cuddling teddy bears is kid’s stuff, but making them isn’t.

“There is a lot in making them; it is not easy,” she said.

Despite the difficulty, Mrs Dawson has made somewhere between 80 to 100 bears, and repaired others.

“The new bears are filled with fibre fill, but I have repaired some of the old ones filled with straw and it is difficult,” she said.

The Bodalla Embroiderers meet at the Bodalla Memorial Hall each Monday, and to find out more call Marilyn on 4476 3805.