New classes for designer-makers from MASTERED

Back in December I had the amazing privilege of helping renowned textile artist Diana Springall in producing one of the fabulous new courses available at Mastered. Mastered offers online study aimed specifically at designer-makers, in their own words: "creating a platform to give them the creative education and support they need to make a real living from their talents".

Here's Diana and I in her amazing studio in Kent. The studio was incredibly inspiring, full of materials and work at all stages, and so was Diana's beautiful, completely unique home, full of work by herself and other makers (from pictures on the walls down to the bathroom carpet!). We spent two days in Diana's studio being filmed while she taught me her design process, from making basic black and white marks all the way to scaling up the final design, and a number of very useful (and addictive!) embroidery stitches.

I was tasked with creating an embroidered clutch bag to showcase what Diana had taught me and show how a finished design could emerge from our initial mark-making. I chose a small flowing segment from one of the marks I'd made in our first drawing session and changed the colour to white, grey and a hint of silver on navy blue.

Eight hours of embroidery later and voila!

I've embroidered for many years, but working with Diana has absolutely renewed my passion for it - I'm seriously addicted to couching, which was a new stitch for me! Hopefully I'll have more embroidery projects to share with you in the future...

If you like the sound of Diana's course you can enrol or begin a free trial here, or check out the other courses available at Mastered here.