I’m taking part in this exhibition of embroidery and textile art. It’s at Ramster Hall, a lovely 17th century manor house in Surrey. The exhibition will be open from Friday March 1st until Sunday March 17th every day from 10 am until 5pm. There are two big halls of exhibits, with a wide variety of styles and media, including mixed media and all involving at least some stitch. The tea room will be open at the same time. It would be great to see you there; it’s a good day out, and they do great cakes ..read more

There is one more weekend left of the Worthing Artists Open Houses, on Sat 1st and Sun 2nd of July. I’m at venue 40; details in the flyer below. Do come along: it would be lovely to see you ..read more

We’re really pleased that our textile art exhibition ‘A Special Place’ will be taking place at Ely Cathedral from 9th – 22nd March 2022. Please come and visit! The theme of the exhibition is ‘A Special Place’. ‘We all have a secret somewhere to go to for comfort, inspiration or happiness. In this exhibition, five textile artists explore their own inspirational locations. This fascinating collection of work ranges from handmade felt to goldwork through mixed media to quilting, all exquisitely executed. The work is based on local gardens and faraway places. Many of the exhibits will be availa ..read more

One reason for the gaps in blog posts last year was a rather sudden and unexpected trip to the Philippines. I’ve finally sorted out some of my photos and wanted to share them with you here. Hubby was asked to do some work in the Philippines at quite short notice. Unusually, I was able to clear the decks from work at short notice and go out to join him. This was a surprise trip in many ways. As well as being quite sudden, it was a country that I had no previous knowledge of in terms of culture, politics, art or textiles. Having studied the textiles of my chosen countries in the City and Guilds ..read more

I’m currently taking part in a small textile art exhibition at the Roffey Park Institute near Horsham. Roffey Park has a new exhibition of art-work every 3 months, and this time they invited six local textile artists. It was good to meet other textile people while we were putting it up (supposedly silently, as we were installing the art in the corridors while training courses were going on, although silence was hard to achieve once we got chatting). It was lovely to meet the other people exhibiting. If you’d like to visit, please phone the institute first as it’s a working environment. Here’s ..read more

So many blog posts get partly written in my head, usually when I’m driving, when I have time to think about it but not actually do it……and then a month goes by, and another month……. There’s always something else pressing, like ‘life and stuff’. I’ve been sucked into Facebook (a bit late to the party, resisting all the way, but now I’ve become quite an addict). And I think there’s also a loss of momentum with blogging, and wondering who is out there reading it. FB is so quick and immediate; just toss in a photo and a couple of sentences, and job’s a good’un. There’s an argument in my head betwe ..read more

It has been great to take part in the Ramster Embroidery Exhibition 2017. Exhibiting alongside some well-known names is slightly daunting, but it’s been an enjoyable and friendly experience. It was wonderful to see so much textile art all together in one place – I think there were nearly 300 exhibits, by 120 different artists, and all so varied. I’ve picked out a few pieces here that I particularly liked.                 I love the pincushions above by Jane Cobbett. They are inspired by a Victorian pincushion although they remind me of the mad little s ..read more

Today, 4th November, over 70,000 people are writing about peace on their blogs. This is organised by ‘Blog4Peace’ which was started by Mimi Lenox 10 years ago. Now over 70,000 bloggers join her on this day each year, to record their messages of hope and peace. I heard about this from a blog I follow, Dancing With Sunflowers. Janice Heppenstall has written about the darkness and despair of current times, the wish to make it better, and the importance of small acts of peace. I think if I tried to add my own version of what Janice has written then I’d only be paraphrasing her words, so with her p ..read more

‘FIVE’ are back again… We are moving our recent exhibition (together with some new work) up to Milton Keynes. We are showing stitched textile work inspired by the wonders of World Textiles. You will get get two exhibitions in one visit, because we are exhibiting alongside an Embroiderers Guild exhibition based on the work of garden designer Capability Brown. I’m working away on some new pieces for the new location. Will try to post some images but time is escaping – as it does – I think the world has sprung a leak somewhere, so the time dribbles out!  I hope you can come and visit us at t ..read more

I had a delightful day this week, teaching a textile art workshop to the West Sussex-based Tamarisk Textiles group. What a lovely group to work with – experienced and enthusiastic, and very focussed. The day was based on applique cut-away quilting technique, combined with Procion dyeing (see green sample here). This colour range seemed to catch people’s interest, and about six people chose to work with the combination of very acidic lemon yellow and turquoise, giving a range of greens. I’ll probably add some contrasting stitching to this sample later – maybe in a really different colour l ..read more