Stitchery Stories

Today we meet Jessica Aldred, a former Royal School of Needlework graduate and tutor, who combines her love of embroidery with her love of all things vintage! Jessica shares some fabulous career highlights with us as she is close to the new adventure of motherhood. With big changes coming along in her life, Jessica has been investigating different ways of working and extending how she can support...

Today we hear from Susan Weeks, the host of Stitchery Stories. Susan shares her thoughts around the future direction for this globally popular textile art podcast. She also unveils a Listener Survey that she would love everyone to complete. It's anonymous, only takes a minute and will really help her understand and serve all you lovely listeners in a more powerful way. And a key change is that Sus...

Today we meet Claire Mort, an award-winning British textile artist who creates colourful and powerful pop art using hand embroidery. And if you read 'Be Creative With Workbox' magazine, then you will already know her from her column, 'Morts Thoughts'. Claire has an inspiring story and we discuss how opportunities come from the most extraordinary situations, and really that we need a mixture of joy...

Today we meet Ilke Cochrane, a Dutch ex-pat living in the UK witha delightfully quirky sense of humour! Ilke has a great story, particularly around the name of her business brand... Mabel Figworthy's Fancies. As well as designing 'what she fancies' for kits and charts, Ilke runs workshops and is very eager for anyone to 'have a go' at embroidery. She shares a great story about her neighbour, and a...

Ami James returns to Stitchery Stories today with a very positive message to share with us as we adjust to life 'under lockdown'. Ami was an early guest on Stitchery Stories back in October 2017 when we chatted about how textile art had changed her life after her diagnosis of bipolar disorder. It's been a very busy couple of years for Ami since then, with, sadly, several painful, personal situatio...

Jane Austen Embroidery, the newly published book from Pavilion Books, created by Jennie Batchelor and Alison Larkin is the subject of this episode of the Stitchery Stories embroidery podcast. Both of these talented ladies are my friends and I have followed this book project closely over the last 3 years! Alison was my first ever (brave) guest on Stitchery Stories, and Jennie was guest number six....

Lianne Van Leyen is the guest today on the Stitchery Stories podcast, where she shares how she re-creates antique schoolgirl samplers into patterns for the modern cross stitch enthusiast. Lianne is the founder of 1897 Schoolhouse Samplers and is an avid collector of antique schoolgirl samplers. After many years of dreaming and planning, she escaped her corporate career and landed her dream job as...

Kate Tume is the guest today on the Stitchery Stories podcast, where she shares how she creates powerful art from embroidery and textile art techniques to highlight the devastation of species loss and the destruction of our natural world. Susan Weeks chats with Kate about: What is an artists residency The luxury of focusing on art and nothing else Toucans, scorpions, iguanas, halloween crabs The s...

Eva Kitok lives in the north of Sweden and has organised her life and career so she can make the most of her time and spend as much time as possible doing embroidery and creating textile art. She loves to embroider whilst watching TV on long winter evenings and also whilst cooking! Susan Weeks chats with Eva about: Music and embroidery The challenges of embroidering The Cure album covers Creating...

This week we celebrate our stitching, embroidery, textile art highlights from 2019. Susan Weeks, as the host of this popular textile art podcast, shares some lovely stories and highlights sent in by listeners from around the world. We hear from some previous guests, from new listeners, from long-time listeners. What fabulous and inspiring messages have been received - these will cheer you up. And...

This week CarolAnn J Allan is our lovely guest on Stitchery Stories textile art podcast. CarolAnn loves slow stitching, taking the time to enjoy the process, and she particularly loves shibori and indigo dyeing. We chat about her interesting journey into being a textile artist, and the community arts projects that she loves to support. Although CarolAnn was one of my guests for the live recording...

This is PART TWO of the Stitchery Stories LIVE recording at the Podcast Social Club! Please listen to PART ONE before listening to this - it won't make any sense if you haven't heard Part One! This is the second half of the live recording. It was a lot of fun chatting with my two lovely guests, CarolAnn J Allan and Mary-Ann Toop about fabric and threads, creativity and our well-being. It was also...

Stitchery Stories LIVE at the Podcast Social Club! This is the first half of the live recording. It was a lot of fun chatting with my two lovely guests, CarolAnn J Allan and Mary-Ann Toop about fabric and threads, creativity and our well-being. It was also a step out of collective comfort zones to be doing this live in front of a ticket-bearing audience :-) Thank you to Podcast Social Club for inv...

Lynn Comley is the guest today on the Stitchery Stories textile art podcast. Lynn works under the brand name of Up And Down Dale and the name gives us a clue as to the source of her artistic inspiration... the landscape around her! Lynn has recently relocated from the Derbyshire Peak District to the North Yorkshire coast and has been enjoying several changes not just in her surroundings but in her...

Passionate about Batik, Tori Riley is the guest today on the Stitchery Stories podcast. Tori shares her story of being inspired by Batik as a young child living in Java, and how her love of it has led her to running workshops and talks, whilst being a busy mum of four! Susan Weeks chats with Tori about: Who else wanted a colouring job when they grew up? an inspiring gap year absorbing the Indonesi...

Fabric sculpture artist Mary-Ann Toop is the guest today on the Stitchery Stories podcast. Mary-Ann shares her story of leaving her civil engineering career, battling depression and starting her fascinating creative journey. Mary-Ann is determined to make her soft fabric sculptures move - and is particularly fascinated by flight... it's the engineer in her creeping out again! Susan Weeks chats wit...

Today on the Stitchery Stories textile art podcast, textile artist Tracey Coverley shares her story of leaving the railway industry and turning her fine art skills into creating textile art portraits of iconic figures from music and film. She works under her brand, "Handmade In Horwich End". Susan Weeks chats (and laughs a lot) with Tracey about: One day a face appeared in fabric and thread What d...

Today on the Stitchery Stories podcast, Diane Gaffney shares her fascinating story of developing a well-established business based around her love of travel. Diane and her husband Jim, are the founders of Textile Traders. They have been buying and selling hand made textiles from south east Asia since 1984. Susan Weeks chats with Diane about: Organising World Textile Days The logistics of organisin...

SFSNAD: San Francisco School Of Needlework And Design Today on the Stitchery Stories podcast, the co-founders of SFSNAD, Ellice Sperber and Lucy Barter share their story of turning their chats into dreams and their dreams into reality as they established their embroidery school in San Francisco. Susan Weeks chats with Ellice & Lucy about: Getting worldwide participation in their Stitch At Home cha...

Podcaster Susan Weeks celebrates that her embroidery and textile art podcast is two years old this week. Susan shares some of the backstory around her podcast and talks about her entertaining, inspiring and courageous guests. Of course plenty of thanks are in order and Susan also has some questions for you, and highlights some ideas for the future. https://www.stitcherystories.com/2ndbirthdayceleb...

Textile Artist Amanda Cobbett shares her life in fabric and threads. Amanda creates realistic 3-dimensional, papier-mâché and machine-embroidered sculptures of fungi and lichen and other hidden treasures of the woodland floor. From her studio in the Surrey Hills, Amanda is surrounded by inspiration for her work. Her pieces are so realistic that viewers of her art assume that they are real! A nice...

Textile artist Sally Stone shares her life in fabric & thread, and yarn. With her textile art, Sally works in both small and large scale. She creates colourful pieces of textile jewellery, finding a new lease of life and use for a selection of objects. And then of course there is her joy with Extreme Knitting! Sally is also the enthusiastic creator of several Yarnstorming installations in her UK h...

Textile Wildlife Artist Janine Heschl shares her life in fabric and threads. Janine creates photo realistic portraits of animals using free-motion machine embroidery, and an exceptional eye for detail, light, colour and texture. And even more amazing, Janine is entirely self-taught. Along with the beautiful portraits runs a deep passion for nature, wildlife and our world, and with her needle, Jani...

Textile Artist Sarah Cross shares her life in fabric and threads. Having chosen teaching as her career path, Sarah has taught art based textiles and fine art in a variety of school for 20 years. However, she has continued to learn skills, experiment with techniques and create her own pieces grabbing time where she can! A recent TV appearance on BBC1's 'Home Is Where The Art Is' has really boosted...

Textile Artist Kathleen Laurel Sage shares her life in fabric & thread on the Stitchery Stories textile art podcast. Kathleen combines machine embroidery, using water soluble stabiliser and layering organza and meltable threads and acrylic felt to create her nature inspired pieces. She then melts and burns the pieces using a soldering iron or heat gun to create her distinctive pieces. Kathleen sha...