The call out went out to the creative team at ACL Islington for Black History month for October 2025 and I went along with a couple of my learners, Bobette and Lesley. They asked me what to expect and I honestly said to them I do not know as the email was sent out and I didn’t know what to expect, should I take more embroideries from my learners or was it wise to take all of the embroideries from all the other learners to show case embroidery for the event. We rocked up and I found that the event was a minimal affair with myself, Coraleen and Petra show casing our classes and the work produced.
Lisa who I met at the event may attend the course starting in January 2026 and who took the video, but that will depend if she enrols and if there are other learners who are in front of her on the wait list. Can you believe it! I have a wait list for embroidery, I am so very thankful for the learners who come, who show commitment and keep showing up and always ask me when the new course is live on the website so they can sign up.
I am showing the video that Lisa took for me and is a collection of videos I have of the event that I need to write an article to show case the sewing team’s work and achievement in what we do in supporting the residents who become learners from Islington borough.
In 2024 saw big birthdays for three members of my family, myself included. I never made myself anything, but for the other two members, I wanted to make something special for each of them. It is in the last few years that I have come back to my hand embroidery, once I got the diploma in hand embroidery at the Centre of Excellence, it opened the door for me to successfully secure my teaching position at Islington Council within the ACL department. I have been in the position as the embroidery tutor for over 18 months and I am flying high and having the best time!
My sister got a hand embroidery piece with green fly, straight and feather stitches and then ribbon and organza overlay, flowers secured on with buttons on top of the green foliage for her big birthday, but what about my nephew? I knew I did not want to do another hand embroidery piece as they are time consuming and yet at the same time so calming to do to take my mind off things. I had a deadline of going away to America and I knew for my nephew I wanted to do something different, so I looked on his website and Instagram and I was reminded of The Breathe Key. It is a guided series of mediation and deep breathing techniques to centre the body into a calm state, once I looked at the colours of turquoise, I knew that was it, I had my inspiration.
I did not plan anything in the sketchbook as I worked directly onto the fabric. I did not have any turquoise fabric; all the satin had been used to make the fabric flowers that were selling at Greenwich Market before the pandemic. I did however have calico and water colour, so I did a water colour wash in turquoise and painted that over the fabric, this was coming out quite big to about A3 or just under it. What do I put on top of the watercolour? I went through my box of old pieces of calico of hand embroidery or painted fabric and I found it, a calico piece painted with bronze, blue and it is either silver or grey acrylic paint. I cut the piece up into stripes and played around with the placement of the shapes onto the fabric, pinned it down and then decided I wanted to do complete this piece with machine embroidery. I used the Bernia 1000, which I love, but the machine was not loving the rayon threads that my sister bought for me one birthday many moons ago, but the rayon is nice and has a nice shine so I preserved. I am glad I preserved as the piece evolved into a semi-circle and then I realised I needed something to fill in the bottom space. As I was in deep flow I also realised I needed something other than machine embroidery so I looked through my button box and found some beads and a button in a clear plastic bag that was intended to be made into a piece of jewellery, although the initial links had been put on they had not been linked up to make the said item. I took a few of the beaded wire over to the piece that had been machine embroidered and positioned them on; I was happy with the result and I felt satisfied; I took a picture and then proceeded to hand sew the beaded wire to the piece. I was so happy with the results! It was only until I had given the piece to my nephew that I remembered I had not taken any closeup pictures of the piece after it had been laced, thankfully my nephew sent me over 45 shots.
Saul’s birthday was in August and as I am still in recovery from cfs/long covid it was not until March 2025 that I was well enough and during the school holiday’s that I had the extra capacity to travel to see him to hand the piece in person. I did not want to send the picture in the post.
I have titled this project as Quilting and Embroidery Bag which has been designed for ACL Islington.
The fabric is calico and the original design came from clip art and then I modified it to put channels in. Channels as you can see from the picture are two parrel lines in either straight or curved lines to form the design. Maleeka a past learner of mine wanted to do embroidery birds and you know when an idea or thought is shared it can sit with you and only be released in two ways, one you forget about it or two you act upon the idea and create it into reality. I looked through a lot of clip art bird images and could not really find one that I liked and so I am glad I was able to modify this owl to fit in with the Italian quilting technique.
Once the channels are sewn in and it took a long time as I first started off with back stitch and took me a whole hour for one side. The stitches were bubbling up, which means they were looping up as the thread in the needle is double and not single, and then I thought I would try how the running stitches would look instead, much much better! So, I am pleased with the end results, I left the back and running stitch in the same piece so I could show my learners my thought and design process, they were glad that I did.
Emma is my sister-in-law and a teacher; it has been good to keep in contact with WhatsApp in sending pictures. I sent Emma, Charlie’s picture of her French Knots, starlet stitch, running stitch that she had been working on so hard. The embroidery has given Charlie freedom to work on her mental health while learning different stitches, the project that the learners were working on was Flower Pots embroidery and applique.
I love making up titles for the different projects and deciding on the design and using a variety of stitches, this is helping me improve my own practice within embroidery so I am stretched and that the learners come with me on the journey of stitching.
Emma is right!
I am a natural teacher and when I looked through my teaching file for my PTTLS course the feedback given was that I am a natural.
I am so thankful that I get to be teaching embroidery as this is always what I wanted to do, but I did not know how to get here! Here is very good, but I am wanting to grow as an embroidery teacher which means I need to carry on with CPD to improve my own practice.
I am teaching embroidery appliqué flowerpots and I have created a 10/11 week course so the embroidery learners have something to get their teeth into it, I decided to teach 10 stitches, but I think it may have been too many and I have already made a mental note to teach six or less stitches for next term. In this terms work I have broken each stage down and have given the first week to sketching their design within the given brief. I think keeping the learners on track within a chosen topic helps them develop a critical eye of creating and keeping within a brief especially if a client asks them later down the line to make them something, as too many choices in the beginning can be overwhelming and that’s when learners can decided learning embroidery as with any other skill feels too hard.
Over the first term we have covered creating their own designs, three or four weeks covering different stitches and they take their samples home with them to practice and another week learning how to pin fabric onto the main fabric, which is calico and sewing the appliqué down, appliqué is a technique used within embroidery and crazy patchwork. The lesson on Wednesday was to start them off on their main project as in week 11 they will be lacing their pieces up. Not all the learners have been coming each week which is a frustration as I have to chase them to find out where they were, (that’s is if they have communicated), this part of teaching is not my favourite, as it is much needed effort on my part and while I am in recovery of long Covid it’s not the energy I want to expend. For the learners who do communicate on why they were late or could not attend gives me an openness of heart towards them and it shows me they value the embroidery classes.
Yesterday I delivered my first live online class for ACL, it went well, three learners attended and one had technical difficulties and so they dropped out. I didn’t take an adequate break and I suffered for it afterwards. I closed my eyes and felt my body sink into deep sleep, it took quite a while to regain energy to force myself out of home to take some fresh air. I couldn’t stay out too long as I knew I needed more rest and then came home to sink back onto the sofa. My energies were so low I didn’t have enough to stand and play with the cat. I am much better at taking breaks when teaching in person and now I need to transfer this to when teaching online. As you can see from the photo above of the sample shown and demonstrating from that the picture was taken today. My table is still in a bit of a mess which for me is not super helpful as I do like to create in order and not when everything is all over the place.
What I have relearnt going forwards for the live online classes is to write down an equipment list I need for the class so everything is at hand, as when I was tidying away the table to teach I tidied the pins away not thinking I needed them.
It has been a very long while since I have written a blog and I am feeling quite nervous about it. May 2023 saw me have Covid for a week and I tested positive on my birthday, so where I was to see my sister instead I was on my own in bed feeling quite unwell, I was sleeping loads, had a high temperature with a fever running up and down my arms and the sensation of what I now I understand is fatigue. I had no idea I would develop long Covid and I had also no idea that I really needed to have given myself three months of sleeping between 10-12 hours each night to have gotten over the virus. Six weeks after the Covid infection and trying to push pass the fatigue I had written a blog and in slow motion I saw myself hover over the delete button and deleted my website. I pushed passed through the fatigue again and phone Ionas up and they recovered it, but the passwords they gave me didn’t work the next day, after two straight days being on the phone to talk to somebody about the issue I was too stressed to push through the emotions and so I let time slip by until I could cope with sorting out the website.
Then James came onto the scene to help me and he has been truly a gift as he knows what he is doing and got me back in.
So now we come to teacher training, I was on Teams attending the CPD training at ACL at Islington and I took the picture so I could later find this principle on Youtube, this session was about mirroring and how we get the learner to mirror the technique back to you or you mirror what the learner is saying. I now have secured a position as one of the sewing tutors at ACL, I teach embroidery. I love teaching embroidery and I have been told by my learners as well as my managers that I am a very good teacher, which is so encouraging to hear! And it is showing through the ideas I come up with as I teach my own designs and break it down into stages, I create power points with images and I video my demonstrations of teaching how to sew each embroidery stitch, they also have test, there are power points for embroidery equipment, I have learnt how to navigate Moodle so I can upload the power points for each week. Some weeks are blank which seems to be in the second half of the term as most of the techniques are covered, there is a final technique for this course for Embroidery Appliqués Flowerpots, but that will be released in week 10 or 11 as they will learn how to mount their embroidery onto mount card and then they can frame the piece.
