Where has the Summer gone?

A wonderful stretch of beach in Ontario..... can you believe how white the sand is?

My feet haven't touched the ground all summer - Tell a lie.... I did watch plenty of wonderful Olympic coverage in a seated position and.... wasn't it wonderful.  Team GB (and  I am entitled to cheer for Britain after 35 years living here), did fantastically well and worth all of the accolades and gold medals for all of their years of hard work.  They did us proud! Of course my next favourite team was Canada, and although we had a very British coverage did manage to catch some victories.

Despite the miserable cool and wet summer here in the England, it was a very busy time for me teaching and getting ready to move house....More about that later.

Apologies for not being more frequent with my posts, and I promise in the future to add more news on a more regular basis.  I also want to include more design, composition, sketch and stitch hints for art textiles. So, watch this space.....

I had planned to share some pics and memories from a wonderful week in Halifax at the beginning of the summer, so this is long overdue.  I was teaching for the Canadian Quilters Association in Halifax, and although this happened back in June,  it was wonderful for me to visit this part of Nova Scotia for the first time, and combine it with a trip to see family in Ontario.  Here are a few photos - the dockside and 'Murphy's' - a great place for Lobster ( and oh .... did I have lobster) with my good friend Maggie Vanderweit who was also teaching for CQA.  What fun....  a great textile teacher.... and experienced lobster gormet... so the class continued.

A few glimpses of Halifax and work from one of the CQA classes

The students in my two workshops did some wonderful work... one of the classes was creating bound sketchbooks with design and composition exercises.  The CQA continue to have these wonderful residential conferences across Canada, giving so many quilters and those interested in art textiles a great opportunity to meet, exhibit and share ideas with friends AND visit new parts of the country.  Have a look at their website and see what is happening in quilting in Canada   www.canadianquilter.com.

Urchfont 2012

URCHFONT Summerschool

In July I had the opportunity to teach a summerschool for Sian Martin's Distance Learning program at Urchfont.  I hadn't been to this wonderful country house adult education centre in Wiltshire for many years and it was wonderful to be back again.  The class was about Digital Imagery in Stitched textiles and we learned about using personal themed images as a starting point for not only future design, but how to include transferred sections into contemporary work. Sadly, as the home and gardens are being sold in September, 'Urchfont' as we have known it over the years (stitched textile classes in adult education by some of the best embroiderers in the country) will no longer exist, but the memories, inspiration and creativity that came from these walls will be remembered for years to come. More information about Sian Martin's Distance Stitch Online program can be found on http://www.distantstitch.co.uk/

Stay tuned.....  More blog entries to come very soon - Information about my new book 'Connecting Design to Stitch' and a house move from Berkshire to Somerset.

thanks for reading.