Wild Textiles – foraging for seasonal natural dyes

This is such a lovely seasonal natural dyeing workshop – we get in touch with the beautiful plants & flowers around us and learn how they can make such gorgeous natural colours. Every season these change with the weather, climate, soil…so it’s always an exciting workshop – totally immersive and full of surprises. On the […]

Beautiful Woad

I’ve tried making woad a few times – always from my allotment plants which are gradually colonising more and more of my allotment…. These beautiful stately plants with their long, grey green leaves and clouds of yellow flowers have always been slightly illusive to me – promising colour but always slightly slipping away when I […]

New design – Sussex Oak

During lockdown our church in Steyning was closed for the first time in 1,000 years – Covid had succeeded where the plague and world wars had failed. Sometimes, I would imagine being inside this very special place which I love very much and I would think about the beautiful medieval carvings of fruits, leaves, animals, […]

Patternmaking workshops

During lockdown I’ve had more time to explore and document my pattern making process – and share with other makers too. I have so enjoyed the online workshops I’ve done with students all over the world – something I would never have expected and which has been a real treat in these other wise quite […]

Learning to Love Wool

My friend and collaborator on the Steyning Imprint,  Alice keeps a flock of sheep. To me they always seemed like rather strange creatures to be interested in – wonderful as lambs (and very tasty) but rather stupid looking as they got older. But this was before I learned to love wool. Every summer Alice pays […]

Celebrating Barron and Larcher – textile designers

This is an extract of a longer talk I gave at the Steyning Bookshop on the 15th November 2018 to celebrate the launch of the book I co-edited with Michal Silver, ‘Barron & Larcher – textile designers’ Up to last year I was working as a hand printer at Ivo’s screen printing factory in Southall. […]

Elizabether Friedlander – designing against the odds

By lovely chance (I was just dropping off some more tea towels and pouches at the shop), Alice and I got to go along to the private view of the new show at Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft –  Elizabeth Friedlander: Typographer, Calligrapher, Designer. Elizabeth was a design prodigy, commissioned to design her own […]

Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft

This week I’ve had the chance to visit the wonderful Museum of Arts and Crafts in Ditchling, West Sussex this week with a new delivery of my Dora Fabrics wash bags, aprons and tea towels… I have so many happy memories of cycling through this sleepy Sussex village on hot summers day (it never rains on the […]

Made in the factory

I had a great day this week printing 20 metres of my hand-dyed cloth in the factory – these will all be sewn up into lovely cushions, purses aprons, teatowels, lavender bags… by the talented Beverley. We’ll be selling them at Christmas markets at the Downland and Weald Museum and Crafty Fox Market in Peckham. […]