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
Winter Olympics, Quilts and Knitting
Who would have thought those three words would appear together in the same sentance?! I first noticed the influence of quilts when Putin was giving a press conference to the BBC and a few others - the design was behind him on the wall and here is part of the explanation: Sochi games’ press release: ”The Olympic patchwork quilt, developed by Bosco’s creative department and given to the Sochi 2014 Organising Committee, will be the official Look of Russia’s first Winter Games.
7th February 2014
Here we are in February (after a 5 week January [...]
Printing images onto fabric
I wish to make a cot quilt for my expected grandchild and would like to make some of the squares personalised by printing images from my computer onto the fabric. I see there are several methods of achieving this and wonder if in your experience you could recommend a tried and tested way. As this is for a baby, it will obviously be subjected to washing so the method needs to produce waterproof squares Answer: As far as I am aware the fabrics that have been designed to go through your printer for use with your computer work well - and I am not aware that the brand makes any difference. These should be readily available from your quilt shop (or www.creativequilting.co.uk).
You could also use a method which uses fixing ink - but that is a little messier - but used by the textile girls a lot and I think produced by a company called Electric Quilt (who design computere software) and I know is stocked by The Cotton Patch and possibly Art Van Go as well as they are great suppliers of all things required by textile artists.