We wish all our readers a healthy and happy New Year and hope you all had a Happy Christmas with lots of visits to or from family and friends. We’ll get your New Year off to a flying start with plenty of projects to occupy the long winter evenings and interesting features to inspire you.
As a follow on to the Redditch prize winners’ workshop, Kathleen Laurel Sage presents a beautiful textile jewellery pendant in Be-jewelled. Pauline Palmer’s Beautifully Dressed uses another smocking technique for the heirloom embroidery at which she excels. If you’re planning a trip don’t leave without Mary Sayers’ delightful vanity case, Travelling Light, or an elegant new handbag from Pamela Cox, The Vintage Look. With spring just around the corner Eileen Tilley’s Bright and Breezy doorstop will let the sunshine in.
I was very sad to part with my ‘on loan’ machine from Husqvarna Viking but I had put it thoroughly through its paces for Made with Love and a Designer Diamond DeLuxe and The Great Outdoors, using computerised embroidery, free motion embroidery and constructional sewing.
We had a great adventure learning about Brother’s exciting new concept, the Pen and Tablet on the Innov-is 1e (or Innov-is 1 with upgrades). The hugely inspirational opportunities are revealed in Art in Action.
Christine Robinson has written an invaluable, practical guide for anyone considering buying a new sewing machine in Consider This. Christine has also given us her impressions of the Kathleen Laurel Sage masterclass day. In Personally Yours Dawn Cowling, for Bernina, creates personalised monograms set off with varied borders and surrounds. Gill Rogers, for Brother, continues a theme in Motifs and Fills.
To complete the line up in another creative issue there are articles on Textiles in the Classroom and on Pamela Thomson, the first Jenny Haskins trained teacher in the UK, together with your regular favourites, including Tori’s Computer Tutor beginning an exploration of Windows 7.
Until the next time,
Liz
