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
Quilting get-away workshops
Val: Getting away for a workshop is the best of two worlds - you get to sew and you get looked after. Jennie has just finished one at Dunford House in Midhurst but she has another booked at Farncombe Estate from 15-17th October; Of course her workshop is full but check out some of the wide variety of courses that they offer.
www.FarncombeEstate.co.uk
How to Use a walking foot
Val: Wendy Gardiner, editor of Sewing World, talks us through how to fit and use this very usefull sewing foot. In fact if she had to purchase just one additional foot for her machine this would be it - and I agree; it makes a HUGE difference to the quality of work whenever you have wadding in and now with the opentoed versions available you can combine it with your decorative stitches and threads too.
Stuttering films
Val: If you are new to the site we hope you are enjoying it. Should you find that the films aren't running smoothly, the data file to download onto your machine is quite large, so here is a little trick: once you have pushed the play arrow in the centre of the filmscreen, you will see a pause option appear in the bottom section (it looks like this II); if you pause the film, it will continue to load in the background - you can see this as a different colour line appearing and growing longer - which will allow you to pop off and make a cup of tea, so that when you come back the film will run smoothly and you can enjoy watching the films as you sup your tea (or wine and/or other beverage!)