About Susan
Susan has been teaching embroidery for many years and loves to share her enthusiasm for a wide range of techniques.
She completed her City and Guilds Part II in Embroidery with the inspirational Anthea Godfrey at the London College of Fashion (as it then was). Over the past twenty years, she has taught a wide range of classes including City and Guilds and leisure classes, with the WI, and most recently independently in the Wivenhoe and the Colchester area of Essex.
Susan took early retirement in 2013, giving her more time for embroidery and textile related activities. She enjoys being an active participant in the local branch of the Embroiderers’ Guild, visiting more exhibitions, attending workshops and reading more about her favourite textile art topics both in print and on-line.
She has also become a student again, signing up for the City and Guilds in Patchwork and Quilting with Creative Stitch Suffolk. According to Susan, “It’s been great to take on new challenges and learn new skills.”
Susan blogs regularly on her website, Threadlines, where she gathers together various elements of her long-standing fascination with embroidery and textile arts more generally. Her hope is that Threadlines will widen her circle of embroidery and textile art friends, and encourage non-embroiderers to try it – just once (that’s all it takes!
Signature Technique
Embroidery
Susan’s Top Tips
- The simpler the stitch, often, the more you can do with it.
- One of the (many) aspects of textiles that I love is that you don’t need to be doing just one project. Try new things…several at a time!
- Doing something completely new with a group of friends makes it extra special.
- If you want to know the ‘right’ way to embroider then turn to a technique manual.
Books and Patterns
Posts
Miniature joy
One of our lovely members Viv had chatted to Valerie at the West Country Quilt show in Bristol last year about Julia Gahagan's Miniature quilts. She was busy making this lovely alpine village pattern and was learning how to do it from Julia's video on our site. She was determined to finish it by Christmas - and she did.
She told us has really enjoyed making it and we agree with everyone who she has shown it to, that it is a very pretty piece of work - Very well done indeed Viv!!!
5 May 2017
New Videos Every Friday Postcard quilt from Valerie Nesbitt [...]
Filming with Carolyn Forster
What a great day we had together with Carolyn last week and we have some really lovely workshops ready for editing; Carolyn spent the day sharing with us her 'Joy of Sewing' and we have a whole series of workshops on how to sew patchwork by hand - a great alternative to EPP and not a stitch in sight! She also showed us how to design cable quilting which you can customize for your own quilt size; there is a super quick layer-cake bag and a wonderful woven scrap quilt too (see picture below).