Design and Stitch

I am both excited and nervous to find myself teaching Contemporary Textiles Workshop.  Pauline Verrinder has sadly decided to retire from some of her teaching committments and I have taken over one of her classes.  Pauline is a very hard act to follow.  I know because she taught me in the  City and Guilds Creative Embroidery course and was  so inspirational.  In fact, I could honestly say she totally changed my life by introducing me to the whole wonderful world of creative embroidery.  I learned so much from her  'what if....?' approach to exploring materials, processes and ideas. 

I was already running my screen print studio when I discovered the  Creative Embroidery course.  I had been researching masters' programmes at various universities but found they were much too theoretical (and expensive!) for me. 

 I knew when I went to a C&G taster class that this would be the course for me, when a fellow student jokingly asked me if she could cut a snippet from my skirt to use in her embroidery! 

Doing the C&G gave me an incredibly thorough education in practical textile techniques at a very affordable price.  I just didn't want  it to end.  And friends, - suddenly I met a whole community of textile lovers and I knew I had found 'my people'.

Anyway, 2 weeks into the new class, we are starting with black and white expressive marks on paper and developing these into stitch. Hopefully we can continue the whole 'what if...?' tradition and create fabulous, unique and creative textiles!

Watch this space for further developments.