I love working with textile makers and have created a new platform to connect and inspire online.
My new Maker Membership on Patreon is a place to learn from me about how I work and apply to your own textile making practice. My focus is to share how to create research-driven work, to develop and refine your ideas, to grow your creative confidence and develop your own voice. I’ll create project briefs, resources, ideas and techniques for you each month to explore and learn.
Membership is now closed until the autumn as the current programme is completely full.
What is Maker Membership?
This is a space focussed on building your creative confidence, research and idea-generation and finding your own voice in textile making. My hope is that I can help you make textile work inspired by my own practice, learn how I approach research, generate some wonderful new ideas and make things that have real meaning and impact.
This is not a taught course or workshop, it’s a monthly series of prompts, ideas, techniques, tips, suggestions and help for you to begin (or develop) textile work which feels meaningful and exciting to you.
There will be some technique and practical information but there will be a lot more focus on the meaning behind your making. I’ll guide you through the way I research new projects, develop ideas, test and trial things and refine my finished work into something that feels uniquely mine.
Each month there will be a theme for you to explore which will be broad and you can choose what direction you want to go with it. I will encourage and support you to do plenty of thinking and research as well as making so that the direction you go within the theme is relevant and inspiring to your own unique personality and style of working. I’ll base each monthly theme around my own work and share the development process I went through / am working on in creating the work.Some themes will be using a particular object or type of making (eg pincushions, hand stitch) and others will be thematic for you to explore making around ideas such as Sense of Place or Family.
There will be videos, audio and written information and there will be suggested activities like exploring a local area, museum or online collection. If you have done workshops with me before, you will know that I don’t have rules about what you “should” make. I want to give you a set of ingredients that inspire you to explore and experiment to make work which is uniquely yours, not a copy of mine.
Some of the exercises will be for you to think about and work towards developing your own unique style / creative voice in a way that makes sense to you personally.
There will be one live event every month, either Q&A or Livestream, maybe on Zoom.
Who is Maker Membership for?
Membership is open to anyone who makes with textiles, beginners to professionals. It’s for anyone who wants to learn and grow with me. Although this is a community of makers, there is no pressure to share or have your work assessed by me or anyone else. There’s no right or wrong, there’s just what is right for you. Community chat space will happen on Discord which is linked directly from Patreon.
How much is it?
Membership is £21 + VAT (or local taxes) which is about £25 a month. You can stay a member long term or just try a few months and see how it works for you. Compare this to an online workshop with me which costs about £75 or an hour of mentoring for £60 – membership is very good value if you wan to learn and grow with me.
If you want to know more, have a look below. Or if you are ready to secure your space, join now.
FAQs and queries
Do I have enough time?
There’s never enough time for everything we want to do, but you can find the time if it’s important enough to you. This isn’t an add-on, something you have to find more time for, it’s designed to integrate into all your making and thinking about what you make. The beauty of online membership is that you can dip in and out when you have the time, on your creative day, when you are in the mood. The resources are there waiting for you. It might be an hour a week. a whole weekend a month or a day a week. It’s up to you and what works for you.
I’m not an expert textile maker, can I still join?
This isn’t a taught course full of new techniques and things to learn. It’s not a recipe to do ‘right’, it’s a set of interesting, new ingredients for you to make up something that’s exactly right for you. You don’t need a fixed set of skills. You can use the prompts and ideas to explore techniques you already know in more depth, to combine ideas and processes with more thought and to add new kinds of making into your repertoire. A love of textiles and a desire to create with intention is all that you need.
I’m not sure I can afford it.
Your creativity is worth investing in. You love making, your sewing space is your happy place and the you know how much better you feel for spending time sewing and being in the creative flow. Doing a programme like this helps you justify the time you spend on your own textile practice, focusses your work so you feel like you are making progress and gives you the excuse to spend time doing what you love. That’s worth a lot more than £21 (+VAT) a month! It’s about £5-6 a week. Coffee and cake. Make your own cake and come and share your time with other like-minded maker members.
Do I have to share my work in public?
I know it’s hard to put your creative heart and soul into something then worry that it will be judged by others. I am not here to critique your work, I am here to support you in your creative journey in building your confidence and creativity. I’ve worked with thousands of makers of all abilities and skill levels and what I think is most important is being true to yourself and making things that have meaning. I’m not bothered by the perfection of your stitches or your drawing skills. We are all beginners when we start and we all struggle with confidence about our work, even me after all these years! I hope this membership will be a supportive place to share your work, but if you don’t want to, that’s fine, you can just listen and work on your own if that suits you better. This is the beauty of an online programme, you can show as much or as little as you want with others. This membership is not 1:1 mentoring either but you can add that on to your membership at any time.
I am on the other side of the world to you!
That’s wonderful! I am so pleased to be able to work with people all over the world not just those who can travel to where I am. Although the live elements are timed for Europe / US, it will all be recorded for you to catch up with when you are awake! You can read, listen to and watch the other resources at a time to suit you and catch up when you can. In time, when there are enough people in the membership, maybe we can have local online groups to meet up in different timezones.
